Globe Correspondent
On a chilly Friday morning at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, sophomore Micqueen Clerger frowned at her chemistry textbook as she tried to decipher the atomic properties of fluorine. Her tutor, Alison Stewart, reminded Clerger to check the periodic table at the back of her textbook and nodded as Clerger filled in a series of boxes on her worksheet.
"That wasn't so bad, was it?" Stewart asked.
Clerger turned to Stewart with a triumphant grin and a hand held aloft. "We're done - high five!"
Volunteers at the Tutoring Center at CRLS, where Stewart and Clerger were studying late last month, are vocal advocates for the transformative power of service work, especially when such work is done on a one-on-one basis. Now, they're hoping that President Barack Obama's half-time message at the NBA All-Star game last month, calling for more volunteers, will help recruit more people to their cause.
Rene Meshon said she has seen relationships friendly and familial blossom in the 20 years she has spent managing the Tutoring Center, a fact she attributes to the nature of the student-tutor relationship.
"To get one-on-one attention from someone who is not going to grade you, who is there for you, who gives you their phone number and e-mail so if you're stuck on something, you can call them - it's very special," she said.
The center pairs 200 members of the community - business professionals, graduate students, retirees - with 250 high school students based on academic need and personal interests, and such matchmaking yields connections that grow far beyond the school itself.
"I have tutors here that have paid for the kids' college education. Three kids have been adopted by their tutors; another tutor ended up helping a kid get a kidney transplant and then a job," Meshon said. "There are so many stories."
A similar commitment to one-on-one volunteer work informs the partnerships at the Multi-Service Center for the Homeless in Central Square. The 18 volunteers, mostly Harvard students, each spend four hours a week providing assistance to low-income community members as part of a countrywide student initiative, National Student Partnerships.
"For some of our clients, we're the one constant thing in their life because they don't have the family or friend support network," said Liz Powers, a junior and one of the group's directors. "Sometimes they'll just want to talk and need our support to just share their feelings."
"We're kind of doing work that normally case managers and social workers would be doing, and it's really cool to get the opportunity to have that responsibility as a student," noted Helen Strom, a social studies major, who added that this approach allows the volunteers to get to know each client individually and to assist with different aspects of their lives.
"If someone comes in saying, 'I just need help with finding housing,' we try to help look at other elements of their lives that they may bring up," from budgeting and financial literacy to finding better child care, Strom said.
The work is demanding, Powers said. "I've continually said that it's harder than any class you can take at Harvard, definitely, by far. It's one-on-one interactions with people [who] have the hardest time out of anyone in the community at finding a job."
But sophomore Lucy Curran added that these interactions allow the students to venture deeper into the community that lies outside the confines of Harvard College. "I think it is sort of an antidote to the campus bubble effect," she said, "and I think we benefit from learning from the people we work with in terms of the difficulties of navigating the public benefits system or the housing system in Boston and Cambridge."
At the Tutoring Center at CRLS, the volunteer tutors puncture the high school campus bubble by bringing a community presence into the school, said Meshon, the center manager.
"I have tutors who have been here for 15, 16 years," she said. "I've seen tutors who meet here get married, and have kids - it's a whole scene."
Louise Adler, who has been volunteering at the center for 14 years, has seen many of her young charges, often recent immigrants struggling to learn English, graduate from high school and move on to college.
"The kids walk through the door very timid, with very little English, and they blossom into these animated individuals," she said. "I'm still in touch with a lot of students, and many have become personal friendships. That's just what happens when you can be so involved in their lives."
