Saint Anselm College’s Access Academy is an outreach program serving underrepresented (e.g., refugee, immigrant, low-income, first-generation) high school students. The program began in 2005 as part of New Hampshire Humanities’ Fences and Neighbors program, an NEH-funded initiative to use the humanities to connect with new Americans. Saint Anselm humanities students and faculty began creating and teaching humanities-based courses to refugee and immigrant high school students from the local Manchester community, one of the most diverse areas in the state. With an additional grant from the NEH, Saint Anselm College expanded its longstanding partnership with the Manchester School District and increased courses offered, bolstering its capacity to meet the needs of diverse high school students.
“Anything that allows students to dig into powerful texts where they can use their voices, use their pens, and write their own stories, is so profound. … the courses that have the humanities at the core really result in some moving experiences”
–Terri Greene Henning, Education Specialist/Outreach Coordinator, Saint Anselm College
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Video courtesy of Saint Anselm College.
Access Academy humanities courses explore complex themes that put the cultures and histories of students’ native countries into dialogue with the American and European histories taught by many high schools. In one course “Writing for Identity and Freedom,” students write about their personal identities and read short texts about what constitutes national, racial, and/or ethnic identities. Over time, Access Academy has also identified broader, common educational needs through conversations with local community groups. The program now gives students experience on a college campus, establishes mentorships between the high school and college students, and provides high school credits toward graduation.
With another grant from the NEH in 2016, Access Academy increased its courses offered, provided more enrichment opportunities, and hired a full-time director. During the Fall 2019 semester, students visited the Boston Opera House. In their student newspaper, student journalists documented their peers’ and student-instructors’ experiences, describing it as moving and deeply profound. The Academy’s new full-time director supports course expansion, student recruitment, and faculty and student-instructors training that creates supportive classroom environments and provides effective mentorship.
The Saint Anselm community and local schools also greatly benefit from the program. Saint Anselm student-instructors work closely with faculty in a peer setting as a result of their participation and many are motivated to start their teaching career in more diverse, urban settings rather than the ones they come from. Faculty engage with their materials in new ways with new audiences. And local high schools now have an established network among themselves and other social service providers in the community to better serve the students.