Student Assistants Are Offering Help as Well as Hope

They sat side-by-side in small plastic chairs, Zaida Davis watching closely as 7-year-old Eduardo Razo carefully formed his first sentence on a piece of lined paper.

“I am a student,” wrote Eduardo, a second-grader at Barton Elementary School in Long Beach. He stole a quick, merry glance at Davis, the Long Beach City College student monitoring his homework, then began again. “I am a college student,” he wrote, grinning at the young woman beside him.

Davis, 22, smiled back. “Not yet, but you will be. I know you will be,” she said.

Along with providing homework assistance, college students like Davis offer a measure of encouragement to Eduardo and other residents of the Carmelitos public housing development in North Long Beach.

And that is part of the idea behind an innovative partnership that for the last 18 months has brought students from nine local colleges into public housing sites across Los Angeles County.

They earn credit in courses ranging from recreation to political science while assisting adult residents with computer literacy and translation needs, and providing homework help and sports supervision to children and teenagers.

For the young residents of Carmelitos and similar low-income housing sites, the college students are tutors, mentors and role models, said Michael Jones, who directs the program for the Los Angeles County Community Development Commission, which runs the sites.

“One of the most positive results we’re seeing is a fundamental change in the attitudes of many of our kids,” Jones said recently.

“They see that college is just not an impossibility any more. The college students have become a symbolic presence of hope in the community.”

The program at Carmelitos, a 713-unit low-rise development, was the county’s first venture into service-learning, which combines community service with a classroom setting.

The idea is that college students and faculty help the community but gain something in return: opportunities to learn in their own fields of study.

Such efforts have become increasingly popular at colleges and high schools in recent years.

The California State University system, for example, now offers more than 1,650 courses each year that combine traditional classroom study with a service-learning component. About 50,000 Cal State students take part in service-learning each year.

Students enrolled in a computer science course at Cal State Dominguez Hills, for example, spend part of their time teaching the basics of navigating the Internet to children at a local Boys & Girls Club.

Public relations students at Cal State Chico help teach community organizations how to write press releases.

And Cal State Northridge students in a biology class help run a science-based after-school program for seventh-graders.

The Carmelitos initiative was launched about 18 months ago. Now, about 150 students from Cal State Long Beach, Cal State Dominguez Hills and Long Beach City College take part.

In October, the Carmelitos program was one of 10 chosen to receive a grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s community partnerships program.

The award of nearly $400,000 covers the costs of training, educational materials and providing supervisors for the students.

The Carmelitos program has been so successful that the housing commission has decided to use it as a model for sites in East Los Angeles, La Crescenta, Lancaster and elsewhere, Jones said.

At Carmelitos, the college students and their faculty mentors try to address the needs of residents in such areas as literacy, workforce development and family and senior life issues.

Students from a women’s studies class at Cal State Long Beach, for example, work with staff from Goodwill Industries to teach adult residents the skills to enter or reenter the job market.

“They try to teach them how to dress and act for a job interview and what kind of behavior is appropriate or inappropriate on the job,” said Carina Sass, the community partnerships coordinator at Cal State Long Beach.

Students from a Cal State Long Beach recreation class work with staff from a nonprofit organization to provide Carmelitos teenagers with after-school recreation and drug-prevention programs.

And students from an Asian-studies class recently provided elderly Korean residents -- and Carmelitos staff members -- with help in bridging cultural and language gaps, said Lynn Anderson, assistant property supervisor at the housing development.

For example, she said, conflicts arose last year when several of the seniors took over small garden plots near their apartments, not understanding that they had been assigned to other residents.

“They’d get yelled at and get very upset, and we were having trouble explaining to them what was going on,” Anderson said.

Now, with the help of Korean-speaking students from Cal State Long Beach, “peace has returned and our Korean seniors are a lot happier,” Anderson said.

The students also assist the seniors in filling out maintenance forms and other paperwork, she said.

But the largest contingent of college students, including Davis, helps elementary school students with homework and art projects.

Many, like Davis, are taking child development or education courses in college and are hoping to become teachers. Their classes typically require them to perform 20 to 25 hours a semester of community service.

“I really wasn’t sure what to expect, coming to a housing project,” said Davis, of Seal Beach. “But it felt very natural once I actually got here and came inside and started working with the kids. And I think I’m learning more from Eduardo than he is from me.”

On a recent afternoon, several other college students sat at tables throughout the room, going over reading and writing assignments with other children.

On the other side of the sprawling development, Cal State Long Beach student Joe Duguay and a partner played dodge ball with several young residents, while others, mostly older students, played basketball nearby.

Duguay, 31, who is working toward a degree in leisure administration, said he wanted to convey sportsmanship along with the rules of the game.

Another goal, he said, was just to help the youngsters have fun on a sunny Southern California afternoon.

“They’re kids. They need to have fun too,” he said.

Inside the recreation center, resident Kumeka Joseph, 17, said she looks forward to seeing the college students. Recently, Joseph said she learned some ballet and modern dance from one student, while teaching her a few hip-hop steps.

“She can teach me some stuff,” Joseph said. “But I can teach her too.”