Coronavirus educates partnership
Service Learning and Community Engagement try to meet challenges of digital education inside and outside Bethel through 2020.
By Izzy Chavez and Ella Mahto | Reporters
March 13, 2020. The day the coronavirus began changing everything in at Bethel University and in the United States. COVID-19 has impacted everything and everyone in the past nine months. Hospital resources, the workplace, schools.
COVID-19 makes it more difficult for students to learn and teachers to teach. Although the pandemic is highly impacting the quality of education students are receiving, it has become a huge lesson and opportunity for all by highlighting the inequalities that affect students.
Tanden Brekke, the assistant director of Service-Learning and Community Engagement, works with Dr. Harley Schreck and Ruth Rodriguez to serve the Frogtown-Summit University community, creating conversations, supporting the community and schools and bringing their partnership opportunities to students. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and this year’s changes, challenges and conversations have been difficult through digital divide in education. Some students face inequalities and the barriers of education through a lack of opportunities, resources and racial diversity issues. Forty percent of students in St. Paul are failing classes, partially due to not having WiFi or affordable technology. Their needs for education are not being fulfilled without face-to-face instruction.
“Schools haven’t just been closed and that’s it,” Brekke said. “They have been working harder to prepare and change.”
Brekke, Schreck, and Rodriguez have been challenged but their ongoing work has been supporting the community, building relationships and helping those in need and growing conversations.
Conversations have spiked, relationships have been built, all through monthly meetings on Zoom. Brekke and the Frogtown community continue to further educate and deepen conversations into other communities and into Bethel.
Education through Zoom and social distancing creates less engagement with students, but the conversations continue to create change and educate not only Bethel but other communities, he said. Bethel students have taken part in service learning opportunities, done research and created projects.
“Teachers and community members come to see people connect,” said Rodriguez, the group’s volunteer coordinator. “People grow and people have hurtful times.”
