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In greener days, AmeriCorps folks gathered at the Memorial Arch: Shannon Harman and Kerry Lowe in the front row, Paul Pitcher, Sara Nemitz, and Randall Bartlett in the back row. PHOTOGRAPH BY LIZ FOX
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AmeriCorps Volunteers Help Build Oberlin Community
FEBRUARY 16, 2001--On Martin Luther King Day, while photographers were snapping President Clinton slap paint on a wall at the AmeriCorps headquarters in D.C., three Obies were quietly going about their work as AmeriCorps volunteers in Oberlin.
Unlike their peers who left town after last commencement, May 2000 graduates Paul Pitcher, Randy Barlett, and Shannon Harman elected to stay in Oberlin and put their talents and energies to work at three local nonprofit groups. Sara Nemitz, a senior from Cape Elizabeth, Maine, completed a year of service with AmeriCorps in August, but continues to do the same work as a "regular" volunteer at Oberlin Community Services (OCS). What motivated them all was a sense of community.
"I wanted to give back to the community because it's given so much to me during the time I've been here," says Pitcher, who works at the Bridge, the town's new computer center. "I can't really put it exactly into words what it is about Oberlin--it just makes you feel so welcome."
At the Bridge, Pitcher recruits volunteers, helps community groups set up web sites, does outreach, and explains the intricacies of e-mail and the Internet to local residents young and old.
He also works at OCS, where he is continuing the Oberlin High School (OHS) math-tutoring program he cofounded his senior year. The program has been taken on by OCS to help prepare high-school students for the state's proficiency exam.
"A lot of my feeling about Oberlin is related to what I learned from the OHS students, who became my friends," says Pitcher.
Pitcher also helps with the computer aspects of OCS's math-tutoring programs for 4th and 6th graders. Barlett and Nemitz coordinate the programs at Prospect and Langston schools.
"Our tutors, who are nearly all College students, work with public-school students on their math skills," Bartlett says. "I supervise the program as well as do curriculum design and recruiting.
"The job is a challenge, and the logistical efforts are significant, but being able to provide assistance to the students and very positive experiences for the tutors is well worth it."
Nemitz works side by side with Bartlett, recruiting tutors, developing the math curriculum, and planning the tutoring meetings.
She says her greatest satisfaction is "being with children the moment they understand, discover, or are able to explain a concept that they once found daunting."
A few blocks from OCS is the College's Center for Service and Learning, where Harman coordinates the AmeriCorps VISTA America Reads program.
She organizes College work-study students to tutor children younger that those served by OCS--preschool through grade 3 at the Oberlin Early Childhood Center, Leavitt Head Start, Eastwood, and Prospect schools, the Oberlin Seventh Day Adventist School, and the Boys and Girls Club of Lorain County.
Thus far the America Reads program has held two book giveaways--one at the Allen Art Museum's community day and one at Head Start--and is planning an even larger one in March at the public library--a Dr. Seuss celebration similar to the Dr. Seuss celebration of last March.
"I make sure that all of the schools' needs are met and supervise the tutors to be prepared for anything and everything," she says.
"There is nothing like sharing the world of language arts with a child," Harman adds. "One of the best parts about my job is that--no matter how long my day has been or how frustrated I am with all of the paperwork--I can always stop and take a step back to see that I am helping the children of this community become stronger citizens."
The four are not the first AmeriCorps workers to serve in Oberlin. Kerry Lowe '99 and Katie Ruth '99 paved the way a year before--Lowe at OCS and Ruth at the Center for Service and Learning.
Ruth is now in Case Western Reserve University's Communication Disorders master's program, and Lowe is in New York City working with Partnerships for Parks, a nonprofit organization that strengthens support for parks and open space.
"The AmeriCorps volunteers are all hard working, energetic, and committed to working with kids," says Oberlin AmeriCorps coordinator and OCS director Anne Fuller, who has worked with the group from the beginning.
"All of them have been great initiative takers who have enhanced both the tutoring program and the agency as well as nurtured their sites' relationships with the schools, the College, and the community."
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