English professor Carlos Gonzalez’s ENC 1101 and 1102 courses at Kendall Campus go beyond books and essay writing, teaching students real life empathy by having them spend time with people who have disabilities.
The class, called the Miami Dade College/WOW Partnership, includes a heavy dose of service learning, where Gonzalez and his students take 10 to 12 trips per semester to The WOW Center, a center of activity and service for adults with developmental disabilities. It is located two and a half miles north of Kendall Campus.
“We created this program to further serve students. It’s not something hypothetical in a book, they’re actually seeing it,” Gonzalez said. “We move away from labels. We see them as human beings without the labels.”
Integrated directly into his course and lectures, the class takes trips on Wednesdays to the Center. Students are required to spend at least 40 hours there throughout the semester.
Programs at WOW include training in life and work skills, technology, art, sports and fitness, music therapy, supported employment, speech therapy and occupational therapy.
“When selecting the individuals for the program, we try to pick individuals who we think would benefit from a weekly partnership and who would enjoy all of the different activities that we do,” said Barbara Wach, the Life and Work Skill Program Instructor at WOW, and one of the teachers directly involved with the partnership. “We try to get as many different individuals involved as possible so that everyone gets a chance to participate, so we select different individuals each semester, unless someone’s buddy is coming back. The WOW Center individuals all seem to love the company provided by the students. They enjoy their time with them very much.”
ENC 1101 and 1102 professors usually teach varying levels of writing and analysis of literature and composition. Gonzalez wanted to go further than what could be taught in a classroom and through texts. Students in his class have to write about their experiences in a profile narrative at the end of the semester.
The process first starts with the class being briefed on the people who use The WOW Center and their disabilities. Then, they take a trip to meet the 25 buddies. The partners must first be deemed eligible for the program by picking individuals the WOW staff thinks would benefit from the involvement with the program. Then students and WOW buddies go through something Gonzalez calls speed dating, where they rotate around a room and talk briefly with each other to get to know one another. Then, students rank the buddies on a scale of one to 10. Once WOW leaders and Gonzalez confirm the pairing, students are connected with their preferred buddy. The center does not disclose the buddies developmental disabilities to its visitors.
“There’s apprehension at first, but then the students leave with deep gratitude and are moved by the individuals,” said Gonzalez, who instituted the program four years ago.
What started as a new unorthodox way of teaching an English course, has become the reason many students choose to keep taking English courses with Gonzalez. However, he admits others have dropped the course because they want a traditional classroom setting.
Throughout the course of a semester, students spend time with their buddies and experience different activities like kickball, karaoke, dancing or arts and crafts.
“It’s a family, and we created relationships with these people,” said freshman Lauren Lavernia, a pre-physical therapy major at Kendall Campus who took Gonzalez’s ENC 1101 course in the fall of 2016 and was partnered with a buddy named April Randall. “I was praying I would get April. Something hit me in the moment I met her, and I got so happy when they told me she was going to be my partner.”
Lavernia wrote in her required essay: “She has inspired me significantly and showed that no matter what limitations a person may have they can still be happy and enjoy life to the fullest.”
“We were at the outfield and she was smiling. So I asked her why, and she said that she was happy to be with me and hugged me,” Lavernia said. “That was the most memorable moment I had with her.”
Students like 18-year-old biology major Dave Ancion, who also took Gonzalez’s course in fall of 2016, said he is now taking the ENC 1102 course with Gonzalez because of The WOW Center component. His buddy is Carlos Fong, who loves basketball and dancing. Ancion was nervous about the project but was open to the idea, and once he met Fong, he knew he had to take the chance to move forward with the project.
“At first it was hard to communicate with him because he has speech problems, but I learned not to judge others and it’s a really special thing,” said Ancion, a freshman at Kendall Campus. “At the beginning he was someone I was partnered with, now he’s my friend. It’s not the conventional English class.”
