Service Learning

These Kids Are Getting Transformed (and They Don’t Even Know It)

On Wednesday afternoons at 2:10 p.m., Bob Correia parks his brown Camry in front of the Middle School and four teenagers climb in. As director of finance and operations at St. Paul’s, Bob is unknown to these seventh and eighth graders. This happens to be the ideal situation.

“They don’t even know I’m there,” he says. The kids talk. It’s iPod this, iPod that. He drives for seven and a half minutes. On Eighth Street, he drops them off at a Queen Anne mansion that houses St. Vincent’s Day Home, an Oakland daycare center for preschoolers.

Forty minutes later, Bob circles back and the four teenagers get into the car again. Their voices are louder and, possibly, more excited. It’s ‘This kid, he just hung onto my pants the whole time’ and ‘He wanted me to read him a book’ and ‘This little kid, she followed me around, it was so cute.’

Later in the week, in Service Learning class, the seventh and eighth graders will write about working with the kids at St. Vincent’s. When they discuss the American economy in history class, the kids at St. Vincent’s will seep into the conversation. The same thing happens in math when they chart demographics.

For now, the teenagers shamble out of Bob’s car and into the Middle School. Bob pulls his Camry into the garage under 262 Grand Ave. He climbs the stairs to his office. “These kids are getting transformed,” he says, “and they don’t even know it.”