Overcoming Anxiety and Fear, Students Open Dialogue

During their careers, community health education majors will have to deal with some of the most controversial and difficult topics in contemporary culture. Issues like violence in schools and communities, HIV/AIDS, drug use and abuse, chronic disease, obesity, cancer, tobacco use, suicide, and sexuality are among the issues on an ever-increasing list. Emerging professionals need an understanding of how these issues intersect with the complexities of race, gender, and class so that they can design effective school- and community-based prevention and education programs.

As dilemmas in the health professions become more layered and complex, so does the preparation of these young professionals. In assistant professor of health promotion and human movement Mary Bentley’s Community Health and Family Health classes, students gain valuable experience that will help them better understand these complex health issues. For the classes students are required to meet with a resident of the Louis Gossett Jr. Facility for Boys every week for the entire semester. That means actually going to a medium-security detention center for boys and meeting with one or more of the residents. "For many students," says Bentley, "this experience begins with a great deal of anxiety and fear. Most Ithaca College students have had little or no exposure to the populations they will likely be serving in their professional lives. By developing a relationship with one of these ‘high-risk’ young men over the course of 10 or so visits, students gain an understanding that extends beyond the classroom walls. For both the IC students and the Gossett residents, the relationship allows a unique window into each other’s lives."

Students meet the residents in an open area and discuss one theme each week — issues like school, family, parenting, HIV, violence, power, race, and class. The meetings become a cultural exchange between two young people from different worlds — two people who are likely to come into the relationship with myriad misconceptions and stereotypes about each other.

Most of the IC students admit that they have never had a conversation with a juvenile offender; some of the white students have never even had a conversation with a nonwhite person. And many of the residents, most of whom are young men of color, admit they have never had a conversation with a white person or even known someone who is in college.

The IC students keep field notes, carefully documenting each visit, and maintain a personal narrative throughout the experience. On the days when the class meets on campus, Bentley prepares the students for the next theme by presenting theoretical models, research on families and communities, and surveillance data concerning health behaviors. This classroom study, by providing a contextual overview, helps students make sense of what they are hearing from their residents.

The students prepare a portfolio containing research and surveillance data relevant to their residents, as well as the field notes and narratives. They then prepare a professional research paper outlining the similarities and differences they have observed between the data and their field notes and giving research-based recommendations for increasing the effectiveness of prevention programs. Their observations and suggestions include those made from the perspective of their residents.

Students also make a presentation in Gossett’s gym for all the participants of the program — the residents, IC students, teachers, administrators, and staff. Each IC student explains what he or she has learned from his or her resident. This comes from the narrative portion of their portfolios. "It is almost always very thoughtful, sincere, and moving," says Bentley. "Students often explain their preconceived ideas about juvenile offenders, race, and class. They often compare their childhood and school experiences, finding remarkable differences and often surprising similarities. It’s an opportunity for IC students to examine their position of privilege and begin to come to terms with how that impacts life opportunity and experience."

Residents of Gossett also prepare and read a statement describing what they have learned from their conversations with the Ithaca College students. These are also very thoughtful and moving, according to Bentley and her students. Many of the young men have been residents of this facility for more than 18 months; some never have a single visitor. The only people they come in contact with are staff inside the facility and other residents. They often describe how much they look forward to the students’ visits. One resident last semester described his feelings about the white teachers who taught him in elementary and middle school: they didn’t know about his life, he said, or care about him. But the conversations with his Ithaca College student, who is studying to be a teacher, caused him to rethink his feelings.

Some residents begin to understand college as a real possibility in their own lives and certainly have a clearer idea of what college is like. They also find unexpected similarities in their experiences with those of the IC students — parents who split up, fighting, depression, the death of friends. "Making the personal connection," says Bentley, "makes both perspectives seem a whole lot more human, each with its unique complexities. The experience of actually being with someone, by having that person’s narrative in your head, can be very transformational."

This kind of field-based experience, combined with research, surveillance, and theory, breathes life into the statistics that Ithaca College students will deal with in their professional lives. It more firmly situates the complexity and the urgency of these issues in the minds of these young professionals — and better prepares them to make a difference.

Photos courtesy Mary Bentley and Louis Gossett Jr. Facility for Boys