The leaders of each Community Engagement program are asked to put on an education event for the campus and local community that is related to the core mission of the program they manage. Education is prioritized as a critical leg of the Triangle of Quality Community Engagement, which is the overarching philosophy of Whitman’s community engagement programs.
As the leaders of the Whitman Friends program, we and Professor of sociology Michelle Janning co-hosted a talk by Professor of Sociology Jessica Calarco at the University of Indiana studying education and families. The talk, titled “When all Work is Homework: The Inequalities of At-Home Learning,” centered on new research done by Professor Calarco on the unequal challenges that families face supporting their children’s at-home learning during the pandemic.
Due to the pandemic, our education event needed to be virtual this year, so we used this as an opportunity to host a speaker who was not from the Whitman or Walla Walla communities. While this opened up many amazing speakers as options, it was also daunting to find and contact someone we had no previous connections to. We found Professor Calarco’s work when searching for sociology articles related to elementary education and were excited by the topics she studied.
Our collaboration with Professor Janning began when Julia Hess reached out to Professor Janning, her sociology major advisor, to ask her advice on how to contact someone to ask them to speak. As a family sociologist herself, Professor Janning had heard of Professor Calarco and said she would be interested in co-hosting her for the sociology department and specifically her Sociology of the Family class. It was invaluable to have Professor Janning’s knowledge and expertise throughout this process and though co-hosting this event with the sociology department we were able to offer Professor Calarco compensation.
We reached out to Professor Calarco and she agreed to speak at our virtual event! She offered to present new research she has been doing this year on inequalities in at-home learning during the pandemic. We were excited about this prospect as this research is so timely and relevant. In addition, her background of research on education and families allowed her to make comparisons to realities before the pandemic. While this past year has drastically changed education, many of the inequalities that are more visible now are not new, they are just more obvious.
The intent behind this event was to provide Whitman Friends Mentor Program mentors information to help them better support and understand the unique challenges their mentees face this year. There are many changes needed in the education system to comprehensively support all students’ success. In particular, Professor Calarco stressed that additional support should be provided to students struggling in school as punitive punishment does not account for the external factors inhibiting their success. This is the central goal of the Friends Mentor Program. Struggling K-8 students are recommended for the program by their school and receive a mentor to look up to and be supported by. Support and interventions beyond mentoring are often necessary, but mentoring is one way of stepping back from punitive reactions to students struggling in school. This brings us closer to Professor Calarco’s call to approach schooling with equity and empathy.
As the leaders of the Whitman Friends Mentor Program, we were fascinated and inspired by Professor Calarco’s talk. It reinforced the importance of mentoring and highlighted the many ways in which the education system fails to support all students’ success, especially those from marginalized communities and of low socioeconomic status. We are grateful to Professor Janning for her support during this process and to Professor Calarco for sharing her important research with the Whitman community.
If you are interested in hearing her talk, use this link to access the recording: https://whitman.zoom.us/rec/share/tGm4ci-By8LXFIMejpOykvqvBw8W9Q23Iqo7PoEJx2i4eXtGYbwuYzSz6jlAGqiJ.zB_2iY3R_6SRtIzz