Isabel Hernandez Continues AmeriCorps Service
BVU freshman Isabel Hernandez is among dozens of students striving to serve their communities in the midst of COVID-19 battle.
Isabel Hernandez is already working with many of those Storm Lake youths through her position as a teacher’s assistant for Brian Gomez, a teacher at Storm Lake Elementary School, and a 2017 BVU graduate. Like Holtgrewe, Hernandez is an Education for Service Scholar at BVU, a freshman who serves her community as an AmeriCorps member. Throughout the school year, Hernandez has assisted Gomez, her older brother, as he teaches 25 fourth-graders. She contributes feedback on lesson plans, class activities, and devotes time mentoring students one-on-one.
Her AmeriCorps service continues even as the local elementary school closed as a result of the highly contagious COVID-19.
“I’ve spent time in recent weeks writing cards and sending them to Brian’s students,” says Hernandez, an elementary education major. “I’ve helped him brainstorm ideas as he sends messages to students. We’re now working on sharing a gift with each student along with a bundle of projects for each student to stay busy with during the summer.”
The experience, she says, has been powerful.
“Fourth-graders maybe don’t fully grasp what’s going on with COVID-19, but they know it’s not normal,” Hernandez says. “This has been very eye-opening to me to see how a teacher responds to keep educating his class even when school is closed. I think this experience will help me prepare myself as a teacher in the future.”
Hernandez, like the rest of BVU’s Education for Service Scholars, will continue her AmeriCorps involvement next year, her sophomore year at BVU. She hopes she can aid her older brother, a BVU graduate, in his classroom once again. “It will be great to actually return to the classroom,” she says.
Other AmeriCorps students at BVU are serving their communities in a variety of ways this spring, most of them in their hometown. Some, like Hernandez, are making cards and working to encourage elementary students, while others are assisting at animal shelters, delivering groceries, conducting food bank distribution efforts, aiding seniors with yard care, and more.
“Even though our students aren’t on campus,” Multerer says, “they have remained engaged in service. That’s not only important to them, but it’s important to the people, the organizations, and the communities they all continue to serve.”
Buena Vista University welcomes its third cohort of 10 Education for Service Scholars on campus in August. Those students, like the cohorts before them, all hail from Buena Vista County. And all represent the first generation in their immediate family to attend college.