visionQuest
“It has made a great impact on our students”
For many, Saturdays are a day to sleep in and rest, but that’s not the case for a group of children who attend Norfolk’s P.B. Young, Sr. Elementary School. They wake up eager and excited because they’re going to school to read, learn and exercise with students from the EVMS Young at Heart club.
The club was launched soon after EVMS students visited the elementary school in 2014 during Community Impact Day. Each August as part of orientation, new students spend several hours at P.B. Young helping teachers clean, paint and organize classrooms and decorate bulletin boards lining the hallways.
A group of students wanted to do more, so they created the Young at Heart club. Each week during much of the school year, they gather to draft a lesson plan that involves a creative reading and writing activity, as well as a physical activity like dancing or gardening. Then on Saturday mornings, they work one-on-one with first- and second-graders.
Nathanael Yoon, MD Class of 2019, says the club became a passion for him. “After a few visits, students started recognizing me and came back each Saturday to request me as their teacher. I became invested in their growth and development and made an effort for this program to be as beneficial to them as it could be.”
School facilitators say the program has been life-changing for many of the children. “It has made a great impact on our students academically as well as socially,” says Kimberly Ritter, Media Specialist with Norfolk Public Schools and teacher facilitator for Young at Heart. “The EVMS volunteers are able to work with individual students to give them the boost they need to become better learners.”
The club’s work inspired EVMS administrators to create a new initiative to be part of the MD curriculum’s service-learning program.
“At EVMS we want our student physicians to be the most community-oriented physicians in the country,” says Don Robison, PhD, Director of Service Learning and Assistant Professor of Family and Community Medicine. “With 26 percent of Norfolk’s residents living in poverty and with the broad health ramifications that generally accompany poverty, this initiative puts our students with children who are at risk in terms of long-term health.”
As part of the P.B. Young Service-Learning initiative, EVMS students work as classroom helpers, reading, playing games and doing word-study activities. “Our students can’t wait for the EVMS volunteers to arrive,” Ms. Ritter says. “They model great behavior, including a love of learning that is good for our students to see.”
Over the past year, EVMS students participating in the service-learning initiative have spent 175 hours volunteering at the school.
In the future, organizers hope to make Young at Heart an interdisciplinary collaboration. Exposing these children to the diversity of health professions might inspire them to choose a career in medicine.
It’s a mission that EVMS administrators believe in.
“Life’s not about what you take, it’s what you give,” says Richard Homan, MD, President and Provost and Dean of the School of Medicine at EVMS. “This is an opportunity for our students to recognize that they are going to make an impact on the lives of these children now and in the future.”
Stories on the Vision Quest page reflect ways in which EVMS strives to achieve its vision of being the most community-oriented school of medicine and health professions in the United States.