Since joining Trek, I have had many rewarding experiences that have guided me to move in the world aided by the sociological lens. In my First Year of University, being in the Coordinated-Arts Program, specifically Global Citizen in the SOCI 100 year long course allowed me this opportunity. I have always felt passionate and inspired by the role that service learning can play in your life and create new, guiding perspectives. So I knew it was a given when I was given the option to choose between the Discussion section of our course or the Trek Program. Volunteering 3 and a half hours a week on average, I was able to connect and tutor students in the after school program.
This immersive experience for me instigates immersive learning, eye-opening exposure and critical thinking in terms of the positionality and active scholarship one must take on as a scholar. Many people think that the university experience is concerned with just the attainment of a degree and transition to the “real world” yet I believe to undergo fundamental change and an educational shift in your own personal knowledge, it is through exposure and interaction to new environments through the lens of your educational knowledge. For myself, moving through a new community/society knowing and understanding how set back they were in the North American society they live in racially, economically and socially made me limit my normalcy and appreciation of a group of people, initially.
But with the interactive and cultural immersion you learn as a contributor and ally to a community, you humanize the theories, case studies, examples and social implications that just happen to limit REAL people. To almost put a face to the issue allowed me to appreciate the knowledge, values and adversities experienced by the staff, students and volunteers. To understand that each and everyone of us had the same desires and intentions yet to believe that we were limited due to many uncontrollable factors forces you to think of your unconscious and not purposeful contribution to the support and perpetuation of a “bottom class” or marginalized/oppressed group of people.
Other than volunteering to help eighth to twelfth graders do their homework, it was also by the space where I could connect and value the anecdotal stories and connections that were build over the course of the academic year. I felt as though it was necessary to devote energy in being a representative of what these high school students could be. As a woman of colour and as a person that has functioned in many different levels in society, my relatability and connectability was utilized and unique compared to my volunteer peers and well as staff. I was someone that was in their likeness as well as age. I felt as though, with the help of the other staff and volunteers I was able to contribute as a mentor and tutor meaningfully. As well as overcoming other obstacles that I faced as a young POC, woman and volunteer. An outsider looking in is to be a participant and contributor to that community you are immersed in. Not the other way around and also not for the intention of “giving back”, because as a volunteer you are the one doing the true learning. To understand the receiving end, to understand how people lead their lives amidst the setbacks society has to give.
By Maia Wallace