Board member Chris Bjork prompts reflection on VHP's transformative educational model
For those who attended the Vassar Haiti Project’s Families Weekend Sale Opening Remarks on Friday evening, Vassar Professor and VHP Board member Chris Bjork’s remarks proved a moving testament to the VHP’s profound and enduring impacts on its dedicated student leaders. And for the current and past students present, including myself, his words could not have better captured how our own personal and professional growth have been stimulated by our involvement in such meaningful endeavors within the Project.
Vassar Haiti Project Student Executive Board and Co-Founders Lila and Andrew Meade at the annual Fall Leadership Retreat, this year held virtually August 27-28
Bjork offered an important academic lens through which to examine the VHP’s unique, experiential pedagogical model that launches students into action. He explored the relevant scholarship of American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer John Dewey, who through his research explicates the clear didactic benefits of engaging students in real-life tasks, rather than solely abstract discussions inside the classroom. Dewey writes: “Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.” From packaging handcrafts, to designing publicity strategies and materials, to running meetings, and putting on live and virtual events, etc, there is no doubt that VHP students have accumulated immense knowledge, and enjoyed great empowerment, through being entrusted with many of the myriad tasks involved in running an international development nonprofit.
And as these students know, this “doing” in VHP is only made possible from the deep, enriching connections they foster between themselves and those communities they serve, prioritizing a constant sense of “being” that allows the relationships that propel VHP to be forged. Bjork highlighted Dewey’s documentation of the observable, positive effects of connecting students with groups beyond their institutions’ perimeters to expand learning. By participating in meaningful interactions with businesses, leaders, doctors, educators, etc. outside their college’s gates, VHP students gain the most authentic knowledge from those who best understand their communities. as well as real-life skills in communication, collaboration and problem-solving with those who come from different backgrounds and experiences.
Yet viewing such relational and reciprocal action at the core of VHP in isolation from the impulse and energy that creates it would be negating another key feature of the organization’s pedagogical mission: that of serving as an engine of creativity, and transformation, for its student leaders. Bjork cited Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire’s notion of “surrogate learning” to lament the test-centric educational model that prevails in the U.S. and much of the world, where students fail to internalize knowledge, and where their own creative passions are suppressed rather than nursed. Yet as Bjork points out, VHP helps combat these consequences by supplementing more traditional classroom instruction with an immersive professional experience for students; they are provided a space where they are encouraged to elaborate their own projects and believe that they can be something bigger than themselves.
My own leadership work with the VHP, which took me to Haiti where conversations with Haitian students, teachers, and other stakeholders painted a visionary picture of the country, was key to offsetting the skepticism and pessimism arising from my engagement with global issues in my social science coursework. In Haiti and on campus, my work taught me that imagination is foundational to all efforts to effect systemic and long-lasting change, and is needed more than ever in today’s world. As Freire writes, “Men develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world, and as they do so they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation.” It is in this way that I see VHP as a facilitator of transformation: by transforming critical pedagogical theory into practice, its own student leaders are transformed, as they, “VHP’ers”, learn about the world through understanding their place within larger, dynamic structures and systems. Subsequently, they not only problematize but actively challenge the conventional narratives and ways of thinking that preserve the status quo through hands-on work in Haiti and on-campus that seeks to subvert it.
Through biannual leadership retreats, and ongoing mentorship from Lila and Andrew Meade and VHP alums, student members of the Project embark upon a powerful journey of self and collective transformation. My membership in VHP over five years has led to important introspective dialogues that have augmented my awareness of how my personal and professional development remain interlinked. At once a timid freshman terrified of leading and public speaking, I have grown into myself and recognized my potential by capitalizing on the opportunities afforded by VHP to experiment in new and creative ways; by following my curiosity and imagination I formed a new mentoring initiative within VHP, and even co-founded a youth empowerment program to be implemented in Poughkeepsie. Yet I view these accomplishments not as strictly personal achievements, but as indications of my own personal growth due to a cultivation of global responsibility and community with others to solve complex issues that require our unified attention, skillsets, and hope. I, like so many VHP alums, comprehend and appreciate the ways in which VHP has not only developed in me real-life skills that will remain with me, but also truly transformed the ways I think, act, and show up in my relationships with other human beings.
We as a Project are encouraged by Bjork’s words and the conversations they sparked to continue our commitment to providing hands-on training in global citizenship to Vassar students, but also to thinking about how to export and diffuse that model beyond Vassar's gates to schools in Poughkeepsie, and elsewhere. Vision 2 Action represents an effort on the part of me and current Co-President Catherine Wu ‘21 to horizontally spread VHP and its pedagogical model to inspire a new generation of change-makers. Through this joint VHP and Community-Engaged Learning (CEL) project to be trialed in Poughkeepsie public schools, we seek to implement workshops that impart to underprivileged youth the courage and tools to envision and realize the change they want to see in their communities, society, and world. By doing this, we hope to expand experiential learning opportunities for Poughkeepsie students, and thus access to opportunities that empower and transform them. We also have begun thinking about how to integrate the unique educational paradigm embodied by VHP into K-12 education systems to render education more empowering for students by helping them discover their own needs, desires, and talents, from where real, sustainable change emanates.
We're grateful to have Professor Bjork on our Board and his guidance in these areas as we reflect on and seek to expand our pedagogical role as an organization in the months and years to come. We express our sincere gratitude to him for his contributions to our opening remarks, which reminded us of the importance of sharing and articulating our work and the ways in which VHP serves as an antidote to isolation, individualistic thinking, and passivity in the face of such immense injustice in the U.S., Haiti, and all over the world. 20 years after its founding, and in the midst of a global pandemic, our Project remains resolute in continuing to fulfill our three-pronged mission, and transform students to transform the world. Please if you haven’t already, watch the recording of our live opening remarks to hear Chris Bjork speak, as well as our Co-Founders Lila and Andrew who kicked off our 20th anniversary weekend celebration.
live opening remarks of the Families Weekend Sale 2020
