Volunteering & Volunteer Students

Last Friday, I took a few hours out of my work day to join some coworkers who were volunteering at June Jordan School for Equity. June Jordan is a "small by design" public high school in San Francisco's Excelsior neighborhood that serves mostly under privileged minority students. Our group was there to act as "community members" and provide feedback during some student presentations. Each student at the high school is required to give a presentation before leaving 10th and 12th grade. They picked from four categories including Math, Science, English Lit. or Humanities. This was pretty unique.  I didn't have to do anything like this in high school. I observed two presentations including a 12th grade one on Arithmetic and Geometric sequences and another on Linear Equations.

It was pretty strange walking down the halls of the high school. As we walked past all of the lockers in the hallway, I noticed a lot of hand-made posters by students and multi-cultural artwork which was pretty cool. In the classroom, I noticed how a lot of tables and chairs were all pretty run down and the computers that they used were several models out from the newest releases. This is probably pretty common, but, coming from corporate America where I sit in a $1000 Aeron chair and have 4-5 computers at my disposal, it was a change.

A part of the senior presentations included the student's plans for the future. In the one I observed, the student described wanting to go to college a year after graduation and eventually become a midwife. However, she hadn't taken SATs, applied to colleges or fully figured out if she could pay the $3500-$12000 tuition at the various schools. It made me a bit sad to think that she might let these dreams slip away because she just didn't have someone pushing her to take these necessary steps. After the presentations, the observers, which included teachers, peers, community members (us!) and family gave the students positive feedback as well as some areas of growth. During my turn, I told the student that she should feel proud of her accomplishments that day and I gave my advice on steps she should take to reach her college goals. I'm not sure if the advice resonated, but, I tried.

The entire experience was a great one. I have volunteered for a lot of various projects, but, none where I was helping out students who were like the majority of my high school (underprivileged and minority). All of the students that I saw at the school were either African American, Asian, or Latino.

My team at Adobe is hosting some of these students this coming Tuesday at our office. There will be a couple of presentations on how subjects like Math help in careers like software. Another coworker of mine is also giving a talk on what it was like after high school and the path she took to get to her career. My team was partnered with this high school by my VP at work who is on the board for San Francisco School Volunteers. All of these events make me really proud of the team that I work for. :)