Chelsea Silva ’14 chats with President Farish about a winter intersession trip to Petersfield, Jamaica, that focused on mental health issues in the island’s classrooms

Clark, Brian E.

English

DOCS@RWU

Roger Williams UniversityDOCS@RWUFeatured News Story The Week at Roger4-15-2013Off the Script: On Course-Based, Global ServiceLearning at RWUBrian E. ClarkRoger Williams UniversityFollow this and additional works at: https://docs.rwu.edu/weekatroger_featured_newsPart of the Higher Education CommonsThis News Article is brought to you for free and open access by the The Week at Roger at DOCS@RWU. It has been accepted for inclusion in FeaturedNews Story by an authorized administrator of DOCS@RWU. For more information, please contact mwu@rwu.edu.Recommended CitationClark, Brian E., "Off the Script: On Course-Based, Global Service Learning at RWU" (2013). Featured News Story. 101.https://docs.rwu.edu/weekatroger_featured_news/101 News ArchiveO  the Script: On Course-Based, GlobalService Learning at RWUChelsea Silva ’14 chats with President Farish about a winter intersession trip toPeters eld, Jamaica, that focused on mental health issues in the island’sclassrooms.April 15, 2013 Brian E. ClarkLast January, Chelsea Silva ’14 joined Becky Spritz, associate professor of psychology, and 13 fellowstudents in a course-based, global service trip focused on mental health issues that teachers face inschools near the rural community of Peters eld, Jamaica. She shares details with Don Farish, who o ershis take on how such experiences complement classroom education at Roger Williams.Donald Farish:A year ago, this trip started with a question: How can we create a true international learning experiencein Jamaica in which students get more than the tourist treatment and earn course credit for their workrather than doing it as a volunteer activity? The idea was to o er students the opportunity to interactwith a society quite di erent from our own, where people are facing the same kinds of issues we mightface here, but having to resolve them in very di erent ways. So, Chelsea, as one of the earlyexperimenters – our guinea pig, I suppose – how did it work out?Chelsea Silva:The trip was incredibly successful in creating a genuine learning environment. This was so di erent thanwhat I imagined about study abroad, because we were truly immersed in the community. Theoretically,we were there to work with Jamaican teachers and student teachers to create awareness for autism. Weended up having these dialogues with people about how the knowledge we have in the Westernworld could be adapted to suit this tropical island, which has di erent resources than we do anddi erent ways of looking at things. That’s where the biggest learning occurred for us – participating in aconversation rather than an attempt to teach or to be taught.Farish:Your trip was certainly immersive in the sense that you’re not looking at those you are working withthrough binoculars from the safety of the Hilton. You’re right there.This idea grew out of a few existing programs at Roger Williams including a spring break trip to ElSalvador in which biology students work in a public health setting in a rural environment. That startedas a purely volunteer e ort – “We’re from America, we’re here to save you!” – but quickly developedinto something else. Yes, they were certainly there to help that local group, but it goes much furtherthan the “hero mentality,” where students swoop in, capes  ying behind them, and then swoop outagain. For 10 days, they are immersed in this society, and they develop a sense of perspective abouttheir own country from the vantage point of a remarkably di erent environment.Originally, we didn’t formalize the El Salvador trip in a course setting that asked students to re ect ontheir experiences. We weren’t taking full advantage. To tie these two things together – the notion ofgoing to a place where there is real, hands-on work to do and structuring it as a formal part of an RWUeducation with course credit – was just the logical step to take. I ’m really happy you’re saying whatyou’re saying about Jamaica. When you go on a trip like this, it seems almost inevitable that you comeback with a changed mindset.Silva:It was absolutely eye-opening. We all expected to learn about family situations in Jamaica and how theyhandle mental health and speci cally autism, but the longer we were there, an awareness grew that theprimary thing I was getting from the experience was something di erent – learning to be relativistic inour look at cultures. As you said, we went down there with the mentality of helping this culture toaddress autism. That autism is prevalent in Jamaica, they are not handling it like we are and that we’dlike to change that. And that is what they asked us to do – to come down and educate them. But thelonger we stayed, the more we realized that we don’t have all the answers, and we certainly don’t haveanswers that are going to work in Jamaica. For us to be of any help, we had to communicate with them.Those conversations were most valuable for me.Farish:One of the things that’s remarkable about Roger Williams is that more than half of our undergradsparticipate in an international experience while they are here. And that’s terri c in the sense that itre ects our value system and our global focus. But I can’t help but think it runs the gamut from trips thatare one step up from tourism to the kind of immersive experiences that you’ve had. We have parallelswith respect to experiential learning in this country – you can have an internship, and maybe you’regoing to learn a lot and maybe you’re not going to learn than much. It depends on the nature of theinternship. Or you can have what we’re doing now with our Community Partnerships Center, whereformal projects are being done and we know the outcomes are super. “Internships on steroids,” I like tosay. I would say that your Jamaica experience is “international education on steroids.” So this may be aso ball question, but to the extent that this was worth your while, is this the kind of experience weshould be encouraging more students to do?Silva:Absolutely. Especially because as an English major going on a what was largely a psychology-focusedtrip, I know that there are certain majors that have a propensity for sending students to study abroad.Unlike business or architecture, psychology is not always one of them. Getting other majors involved inthis way is critical. This trip was psychology-oriented, but it was a global citizenship learningexperience – and that’s a huge part of what this university is all about.Farish:Let me challenge you a bit. You’re an English major. How do you go about preparing for your futurecareer, whatever you imagine that is?Silva:I’m an English literature and creative writing double major and I’m planning to go to graduate schoolfor English. I’m studying abroad in Cambridge, England, over the summer – an internationalexperience that’s going to be miles apart from our rural Jamaica homestay trip.Farish:I’ve been to Cambridge and it doesn’t look very much like Jamaica! But it doesn’t look much likeAmerica either. From the standpoint of job-readiness and contributing to society and getting a goodpaying job, people o en use the English major as perhaps the archetype of what relevance does ithave to much of anything? Part of what we are trying to do is to o er English majors at Roger Williamsthe chance to gain an edge. How can we augment your education and provide additional tools,reference points and perspectives that make you stand out from the next English major from a di erentschool who is looking for the same job?I like to think it’s this kind of experience. You have a pretty compelling story to share. At Roger Williams,we feel good about o ering opportunities for you to get a leg up over other people. Not to takeanything away from you – you actually had to do it. But providing those opportunities is important,because we’re trying to give people more than one arrow in their quiver.So if you’re going to attend graduate school for English, good for you – the Cambridge experience isclearly going to be very bene cial to you; but in a di erent way, so will the Jamaica experience. Andmaybe the Jamaica experience makes the Cambridge experience more easily accomplished, andmaybe you can triangulate? It may be quite di erent than Jamaica, but the British certainly have adi erent way of doing business than we do. You will emerge with a perspective that students whonever le  home during their four years won’t have.Silva:One of the things that stood out for me was just that complete removal from Western culture. Now thatwe are back at Roger Williams, I’ve started an anthropology course that I’m interested in, because ofour trip. For a thesis project I’ll be doing in Cambridge, I want to take an anthropological look atEuropean folklore. So what I took from the Jamaica trip is working its way into my academic work inEnglish literature.Farish:Even at this late date in your undergraduate career, you’re  nding that the experience in Jamaica is stillhelping to shape your thinking?Silva:Yes. And with English literature, particularly for graduate school, it’s critical that you home in on whatreally appeals to you – an era or a style of writing. I would not have looked at the cultural side of it nearlyas closely if I hadn’t experienced what I did in Jamaica.Farish:The whole idea is to have a broadening experience, and you are able to reference that quite literallyagainst your choice of classes. Part of what we are trying to do with experiences like yours in Jamaica isto interconnect a number of educational values we have at Roger Williams. For one, we need to givestudents opportunities to see how what they are learning in class pertains to the world they will live inwhen they graduate. But also, the chance to work collaboratively with peers from other disciplines –something that the workplace really values. The students who went with you were from di erent majors– psychology, but not just psychology. People have di erent things to learn from each other in thesemajors. And the other connection is civic engagement. How do we encourage students to contributeto the betterment of society? We are not trying to turn everybody into Gandhis and Mother Teresas, butwe would like to think we are graduating students who have some greater sense of social responsibility.We can use courses like your Jamaica trip to get maximum, lasting educational value by way of a singleinternational experience. If you are dropped into the middle of Jamaica to work with a community for12 days, how can your worldview not change as a consequence of that experience? Traditional studyabroad is inherently a good thing; our thought was to take that inherently good thing and make it evenbetter. These outcomes are not standalones – we can mix them together in a single experience. To me,this represents the next evolution of our educational thinking. You got to do this right out of the box,Chelsea! You’re very brave in going out in unchartered waters!Silva:It’s a very di erent kind of learning. To travel under the umbrella of an academic course that’s alsoservice-based – that was a very jarring experience. The culture is so completely di erent that it took us along time to understand how to work e ectively – now we’re thinking about how to make this a two-part program so you can come back with the knowledge gained on the  rst trip. It was such arevelatory experience for us to  nally understand how we needed to work within the community.One of the bigger challenges for us was re-acculturation when we came home. I went out to dinnerwith family members who talked about stopping in Jamaica on a cruise. I was thinking to myself, “I haveno way of articulating how di erent my experience was than a cruise stop…” We spent a half day inNegril in the tourist section at the end of our trip and it was so uncomfortable. The white beach wasamazing, but we were so glad we didn’t spend out entire trip as tourists because it was a completelydi erent experience. It’s impossible to say that you stopped on your cruise for an a ernoon, sat on thewhite sand in Negril and now you’ve been to Jamaica.Farish:It’s great to talk with you about this. A lot of thought and planning went into the experience, and youo en wonder if it measures up to what we had hoped for. Most of these do.Silva:The community in Peters eld was so welcoming and hospitable to us. We stayed with host families andI have a letter for mine in my backpack right now that I’m going to mail.The experience was emotional, too. At one point we were leading workshops on autism with smallgroups of teachers who worked with the Heart Program in Montego Bay. We started o  by asking:What do you know about autism? Do you know students with disabilities? Have you had students inyour classrooms that in retrospect, you think might have had autism? The group was very vocal andsupportive of the need to change the ways that schools deal with autism and other disabilities.Halfway through the workshop, one woman raised her hand and shared this moving story about aprincipal who was very supportive of children with disabilities. And then at the end, she said: “And Ireally respect this principal because my own daughter has autism.” We all just sat back. This was one ofthe experiences where we went in with the intent to be the disseminators of knowledge, but we just satback and let her talk. This woman had an amazing story about how she had reacted when shediscovered her child’s autism.There had been four or  ve or these small groups, and when we all came back together, this womanvolunteered to speak for our group. She stood up in front of this crowd of hundreds of Jamaicanteachers and shared this incredibly moving story that was personal and from the heart and had so littleto do with any knowledge that we had given them – a story that this culture had created all by itself.I just lost it. I stood in the back and cried for 10 minutes. It was such an amazing and unique experience.We’d like to think that we were helpful in building awareness or catalyzing some kind of action to betaken, but that was one moment where we realized that they really didn’t need that much from us. Theyjust need someone to spark that conversation.Farish:Great story, Chelsea, and clearly a very meaningful experience.This conversation served as the basis for “O  the Script” on Page 3 of the Spring 2013 issue ofRWU Magazine.Share This: REQUEST INFO VISIT CAMPUS APPLY MAKE A GIFTMap & DirectionsContact UsDirectoryNewsEventsAthleticsrwu.eduUndergraduate SiteGraduate SiteSchool of LawSchool of Continuing Studies    © 2018 Roger Williams University. All rights reserved.GMAIL AT RWU BRIDGES MY RWU IT HELP SITE POLICIES WORK AT RWUOne Old Ferry Road, Bristol, RI 028091-800-458-7144

Off the Script: On Course-Based, Global Service Learning at RWU

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Off the Script: On Course-Based, Global Service Learning at RWU

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