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• 1 2023-04-03T14:35:41-04:00 Story of Us 38 plain 2023-04-30T22:09:21-04:00 For over 100 years, the Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) has functioned as Harvard’s umbrella community service organization, currently with more than 50 student-led volunteer and advocacy programs that serve the Cambridge and Boston communities. PBHA was founded at Harvard in 1904 in memory of Reverend Phillips Brooks, an Episcopal preacher and strong proponent of social service. By 1920, PBHA no longer had a religious affiliation, but had grown tremendously in size and impact. PBHA would only continue to flourish through the following several decades, with the number of programs greatly increasing in order to respond to emergent needs in Boston and Cambridge.

  The north star of all of PBHA's work is its mission statement. According to the mission statement, PBHA "strives for social justice" through its work, aiming to both "creatively meet critical needs and advocate for structural change." As a Harvard-affiliated organization, PBHA "seeks to promote social awareness and community involvement at Harvard and beyond." PBHA is also guided by its six core values: love & compassion, social justice, community building, stewardship, growth of people & learning, and diversity.
  
  Driven by those principles, PBHA's programs generally fall into five main categories, referred to as programming groups:

  • Afterschool & In-school programs, working with youth in Boston and Cambridge to improve their academic and socio-emotional skills.
  • Mentoring programs, which typically run in a 1-1 big sibling style model, pairing up a child in the Boston area with a college student to build deep relationships and support their personal goals.
  • Adult services, which foster relationships with adult and elderly populations through visits to local old-age homes, adult ESL programs, and more
  • Advocacy, health, and housing initiatives, including PBHA's two student-run homeless shelters in Harvard Square, as well as a variety of other advocacy-based groups.
  • Summer Urban Program camps.

  One of PBHA’s largest undertakings is the Summer Urban Program (SUP), a network of ten summer camps for youth in predominantly low-income neighborhoods across Boston and Cambridge. SUP was first established in the 1970s in the Columbia Point public housing complex in Dorchester, and has since grown to serve more than 700 young people in Boston and Cambridge each summer.
  
  SUP aims to combat summer learning loss by providing in-class lessons each day alongside fun activities and field trips in order to empower young people to build the skills they need to achieve their personal, academic, and interpersonal goals. Staffed entirely by college and local high school students, SUP counselors and directors go through extensive training before the program begins in classroom management, curriculum development, restorative practices, socio-emotional learning, and more. SUP costs $100 per camper for the entire summer, with daily breakfast and lunch and frequent trips included in that cost, making it by far the most affordable summer option for many families. Additionally, SUP will never turn a child away if that cost presents a challenge for any family.
  SUP campers spend their days in classes with up to nine other children their age, overseen by a Junior and Senior Counselor. Senior Counselors are college students whose role falls somewhere in between that of a typical summer camp counselor and a teacher, charged with developing and implementing curriculum for their class and responsible for the wellbeing of all campers. Junior Counselors are local high school students, many of whom are former SUP campers, who work with their assigned Senior Counselor and function similarly to a teaching assistant. Each camp is guided by two college-aged Directors, analogous to school principals, who spend the spring semester preparing for camp by hiring counselors, recruiting campers, and taking care of logistics, licensing, fundraising, and budgeting. During the summer, Directors are there to support counselors in whatever they need, keep families up to date on camp activities, and ensure that everything runs smoothly.
  
  Currently, PBHA and SUP staff are hard at work in preparation for the second year of in-person SUP following the pandemic. Despite the obstacles that the pandemic presented for so many in our communities, SUP remained in virtual and hybrid models through the summers of 2020 and 2021 in order to continue providing the high-quality summer experience that so many families rely upon for their children. Last summer was a tough one in many ways, as SUP returned to a fully in-person model after two years, and staff and students alike had to re-learn the norms of camp. Of the many challenges faced last summer, numerous former SUP employees expressed that they felt unprepared to have students with disabilities in their classrooms and struggled to facilitate inclusive classrooms that were attentive to all students' needs. Although SUP is not designed as a special education program, its mission is to be as welcoming as possible to children of all backgrounds, as the reality is that SUP is often the only summer option that families can afford. According to data from last summer, 16.9% of all SUP participants reported having Individualized Education Plans or other special services. In the context of SUP, this amounts to an average of 1-2 students in each classroom, meaning almost every Senior Counselor will encounter a student with some sort of IEP or disability, and thus everyone should receive basic training on this topic. With this background in mind, I set out to understand how to best design a training that would prepare Senior Counselors to handle the unique challenges that come with teaching a neurodiverse classroom.

• 1 2023-03-01T13:04:56-05:00 Talia Levitt - Story of Self 23 image_header 2023-04-05T18:11:23-04:00

  At the core, I’m involved in PBHA because I’m really, deeply passionate about PBHA’s mission. All of PBHA's work is in pursuit of social justice, meeting critical needs of the communities around us through direct service while also advocating for structural change. At a place like Harvard, it’s so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day chaos of classes and work, but PBHA welcomes students to look beyond the gates of Harvard’s campus and understand our position within the wider lens of Boston and Cambridge, and do our share in working towards positive social change here.

  Even more than that, I think the way the PBHA does its work is really rooted in empathy and compassion. You see this in the programs and the work that they do, and you see it on a leadership level in the ways that people interact with one another in meetings. It’s a community that makes you genuinely feel good to be a part of and feel welcomed, which can be hard to find at Harvard.

  I've been involved in public service in some form or another for pretty much as long as I can remember. Entering Harvard as a first-year, it was a no-brainer to continue this commitment to volunteering and join a PBHA program. What I didn't necessarily realize at the time was how pivotal my involvement in PBHA would become in shaping my entire college experience. As I began spending more time at PBHA, my love for the organization, its values, and the people stewarding the work only grew - which in turn led me to continue seeking more and more ways to be involved and take on leadership roles.
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  PBHA is truly unlike any organization I've ever been a part of before. The time I've spent with PBHA has changed my life in so many ways, and I'm so happy that my PBHA journey is nowhere near over. I'm so excited to see where my next two years in college take me with PBHA, and I'm positive that I will continue to stay connected to PBHA even after graduation.