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Armand Perry forging a partnership
Armand Perry ’02 happened on the idea to create a partnership between Reed and a local school by accident, but he put it into motion. Now, eight Reed students work as interns at Portland’s Harriet Tubman Middle School, each spending eight hours a week teaching after-school classes and acting as teacher’s aides.
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Sometimes the twice-weekly commitment at the North Portland school is difficult to achieve. Just getting there is hard enough, and once the interns arrive they never know what to expect. Still, they stay excited about their teaching experiences, says Perry, a junior from Phoenix, Arizona. Even after two years of coordinating the project along with fellow students Amy Armstrong ’03, Rachel Crocker ’03, and Sarah Glasband ’03, Perry’s eyes light up when he talks about his involvement with Tubman students.
The original goal was to give Reedies an opportunity to become involved with a different social structure and different races. That goal is being met at Tubman, where students come from diverse ethnic and economic backgrounds, Perry says.
“At the very least we have given them a realistic view of what it takes to deal with so many kids who have so many distractions,” he adds.
Last April and November the Reed interns invited the Tubman students to the college for a day. The middle schoolers explored the canyon with the head of the student environmental group, who explained the canyon’s biology. They saw the blue glow of Reed’s nuclear reactor, made Goo in a chemistry lab, jabbered over the college radio station, and attended a mock conference on the Odyssey taught by classics professor Wally Englert. They also developed photos they had taken of themselves.
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Perry will put the Tubman experience on his résumé. Eventually he hopes to be a lawyer, working with nonprofit groups and public policy issues.
“This has given me so much real-world experience,” Perry says. “I will end up in law school, but being involved in this will make me a more empathetic lawyer.”
