Last September, 13 Simmons College undergraduates signed up for a sociology class called Globalization. They expected to study cultural convergence. Their professor expected them to experience it.
"We live in Boston," said Anna Sandoval Girón, a sociology professor at Simmons. "It's a city full of interesting people. So I came up with the idea of teaching in a different way. Instead of reading about immigration in a book, why not leave the confines of the school and talk to people who have migrated here? I wanted students to see macro-level theory coupled with people who are living the theory."
Sandoval paired the students with recent immigrants who were studying English as a second language in Boston - either at the local YMCA International Learning Center or at the Symphony Plaza housing complex. She explained that the students and their partners would spend an hour together every week throughout the semester, just talking to each other. Both locations are an easy walk from Simmons, but the idea felt virtually worlds away for students raised on electronic communication.
"We were all really nervous," said Melina Muñoz, a junior.
Sociology 267: Globalization was one of 13 undergraduate courses at Simmons last fall that fell under the category of Service Learning - an increasingly popular teaching method that combines traditional instruction with community service. Some 500 out of a total of about 1,900 Simmons undergrads are involved in service learning, according to Susie Flug, associate director for undergraduate service learning. In Sandoval's class, community service meant helping immigrants practice speaking English. Still, by sharing their life stories, the immigrants did the bulk of the teaching. While initially anxious, most of the teams had forged educational friendships by this month.
"You are like books to each and every one of my students," Sandoval said at an end-of-semester classroom event on Dec. 10 honoring the immigrant partners. "I wanted my students to understand that globalization was more than numbers and economic indicators, and you gave them that."
The event looked a little bit like a high school science fair; students stood next to poster-board presentations detailing the personal lives of their immigrant partners, chockablock with information that they never would have found in textbooks. And although the weather was awful that day, most of their partners showed up to answer questions and to dote on the students. The students' partners ranged in age from the early 20s to the late 80s, and they represented several continents - including Africa, Asia, and Europe - although the majority seemed to be sturdy grandmothers from Eastern Europe.
"I learned so much about the Soviet Union and the Cold War," said Kathleen Peters, a senior, whose partner, Lidiya Yeschina, a civil engineer from Ukraine, immigrated to the United States in 1995.
Student Melanie Robinson stood quietly as her partner, Inna Zelondzheva, told of life in Ukraine before she immigrated in 1996. Boys would steal loaves of bread out of her arms, Zelondzheva said. Her neighbors poisoned her dog.
"They said, 'People don't have food, and you are feeding a dog!' " Zelondzheva said. "It was such a good dog. I am still sad to think of it."
She paused to praise Robinson. "Melanie is a very good listener," she said, patting her young partner on the shoulder. "She was interested in my life."
For the students, the class taught lessons not only in cultural convergence, but in human convergence.
"I learned not to assume that people are ordinary," Robinson said. "Before this, I would have assumed that almost everyone on the street was boring."
Muñoz said she grew fascinated with her partner, Alla Lyatskaya, a Soviet cosmophysicist who was born on a Siberia-bound train in 1942 during the siege of Leningrad and who moved to the US in 2004. In addition to her partner's history, Muñoz learned to appreciate the merit of a face-to-face conversation.
"Sometimes it feels like we're all so isolated and so busy," Muñoz said, noting that students tend to communicate with each other in short bursts of text messages and Facebook notifications.
"It was amazing just to sit there and listen to someone for an hour," Muñoz said. "It was just so interesting to sit down and talk to someone, as opposed to being in a rush. It ended up being something we looked forward to on a weekly basis."
