The Azusa Pacific Blog

Sara is one of the Center for Academic Service-Learning and Research’s returning Service-Learning Advocates from last year. She hails from Elk Grove in Northern California and is a sophomore, double majoring in Biblical Studies and History with a minor in Theology. She is currently studying to become a college Bible professor. This desire was inspired by working last year at the CASLR with several of the Service-Learning Bible courses.

This year Sara is working with quite a few Community Partners, including the Azusa Unified School District (AUSD), specifically within Special Education; Foothill Community Center; Foothill Community Church; the Azusa Wellness Center; Stepping Stones for Women; David & Margaret Family Services; and the City of Azusa, including working with Mayor Rocha. Her second year working at the CASLR has been quite a whirlwind of activities and projects. She has also helped facilitate the first online Service-Learning course.

Sara loves working at the CASLR because it allows her to see the big picture of what Service-Learning offers and its mission to provide reciprocal learning and partnership between APU classes and the Azusa community, helping to make a difference in both the lives of the APU students and the Community Partners. She finds great joy in working with her Community Partners, and also likes having the opportunity to empower her fellow students to go out into the community in order to use their developing skills and to learn more in return. Planning and organizing events is also a favorite of her varied tasks as an SLA.

Some of her best experiences so far have been working with Dr. Duke’s Introduction to Biblical Literature: Exodus/Deuteronomy class. She got the chance to take this class last semester where she had a great experience learning about the Jewish traditions of Passover. They planned and hosted a Passover Celebration at Foothill Community Church, where they spent all day in the kitchen bonding as a class preparing the traditional feast. Students from the Service-Learning BLNG 414: Advanced Hebrew class partnered with them by coming to read the traditional blessings in the original language. It was a special experience for everyone involved.

This semester, Sara has had the opportunity to work with Dr. Duke in the same class as a Service-Learning Advocate. Since it is a fall semester class, instead of learning about Passover, the students have been researching and presenting on the Festival of Sukkot, the Jewish Feast of Booths or Tabernacles, which is an eight- day autumn harvest festival.

Sara hopes to leave behind a legacy of organized and well established projects for those SLAs who will come after her. She also has to admit that she will be leaving behind a few great blunders as well. She won the “CASLR Blunder of the Year” award last year for a series of unfortunate events at a school visit and feels that she might be in the running once again for this year, despite her best efforts. The CASLR yearly blunder award is a playful award given out to the SLA with the best story of a project gone awry. This is a way to provide safe sharing of inevitable human errors while focusing on the opportunity to learn and grow from such mistakes.

Sara’s strengths are Input, Belief, Connectedness, Consistency, and Restorative. Her SLA “Buddy,” a first year SLA, would most likely describe her as detail oriented, talkative, funny, passionate, and able to get along well with others. Working at the CASLR has allowed her to be able to see the needs of the community around her in a new way. Partnering with her Community Partners and hearing their different perspectives has also been quite thought provoking and inspiring for her.

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The Center for Academic Service-Learning and Research (CASLR) at Azusa Pacific University now collaborates with more than 70 undergraduate classes each semester with a Service-Learning component integrated within their syllabi. What students are learning in the classroom is immediately applied in practical ways that makes a difference in the community as well as giving great hands-on experience to participating students.

The CASLR employ nine undergraduate students to organize all functioning components, including communicating with the professors, the students in each class, the community partners, and organizing all the logistics. These amazingly talented individuals are called Service-Learning Advocates (SLAs), and they are the hands and feet of this sizable endeavor.

On Thursday, September 8^th, the Azusa City Library celebrated International Literacy Day. The library recognized the transformative efforts of “Azusa Reads, Writes, & Counts,” which provides Azusa’s elementary school students with free tutoring from APU students. This program is provided by Azusa Pacific University’s Office of Community-Based Federal Work-Study (C-B FWS) and facilitated by the Center for Academic Service-Learning and Research (CASLR).

Dr. Judy Hutchinson, CASLR’s Executive Director, and Stacey Kim, Coordinator for C-B FWS Programs, received a “Literacy Service Award” and certificates of recognition from the California Senate and Legislative Assembly in honor of this program’s significant contribution to community literacy.

The following is an excerpt from a speech by a grateful father, John Garcia, who shared with attendees how the Azusa Reads, Writes, and Counts program had helped his daughters:

“How do you get a child in the first grade to be reading at a sixth grade level? Yes, genetics play a part in it- but even a person blest with natural athletic skills cannot compete at a professional level without good coaching, and that is what we found at Azusa Reads: excellent one-on-one coaching. By the time our daughter was in the 1^st grade she was reading at the sixth grade level and comprehending what she was reading. The APU students motivated her to read by the interest they showed in her and by making it fun. This interest in her progress made her feel special and enjoy reading that much more…

The warm attitudes the APU students have with the children also makes for a comfortable and motivating environment, and when someone is comfortable with something they will participate more. It helps them fall in love with reading, so much so that our daughter didn’t want to stop reading and even wanted to read in the shower…We have a younger daughter who is in 3rd grade and participating in this expanded program. So I ask again, how do you get a child who is in the third grade reading at a sixth grade level and doing 4^th grade math as our younger daughter is doing. Once again, good coaching. In this expanded program she has learned in particular, long division in math and sentence structure in writing.

Now, you may be thinking, sure, these are some of the same things that are taught in the classroom; but in there, the student has to keep up with the pace with the rest of the students and may fall behind. This program gives them the chance to learn something that may have given him or her trouble in the classroom, and pick it up at their own pace. In this community there are many students who live in a home where English is not the primary language and struggle to keep up. This program gives them a change to get caught up. We have had parents tell us that their child was struggling in school but after a couple of months in the program they noticed a remarkable turnaround.

Since Azusa has such a diverse population it is important to have people willing to work with different races and ethnicities. The APU students have always embraced all and strive to make people who do not speak English feel comfortable and welcome. In closing, we would like to thank APU for caring so much for the students of this community, for donating its time and talent to this program, and for continuing to work hard for the success of this program and its students. We would also like to thank the Azusa Library for providing a super environment for this program. Congratulations APU and APU students for this honor.”

Dr. Hutchinson and Stacey Kim with Reed Strege, Assistant Director of the Azusa City Library.

 

Parents and students testify to the program’s impact during the ceremony.

 

Mayor Joe Rocha, library staff, APU representatives, and Azusa families celebrating together.