Students Mentor Youth Offenders
Georgetown students are offering Washington, D.C., youth offenders a chance to see how their lives could change for the better.
The After School Kids (ASK) program, created in the mid-1980s, trains students to work in small groups as tutor-mentors for adolescents in the D.C. court system.
Seeing the path to a better life is central to the ASK mission, says Suzanne Tarlov, associate director of the Center for Social Justice, Research, Teaching and Service.
“The Center for Social Justice takes self-reflection very seriously,” she says. “And the reflection exists for both our university students and the kids they are trying to help.”
Georgetown mentors spend about five hours biweekly showing youth how to write resumes, perform in job interviews, manage bank accounts and cope with life’s frustrations without acting out.
Von Travis Crawford (N’12) knows about bad decision-making firsthand and is helping Washington, D.C., teenage offenders to turn their lives around.
“Meeting the students in the ASK program took me back to my days growing up and where I came from,” says Crawford, a human science major. “I made mistakes too but they don’t have to stop you. I wanted to show them that.”
From Street to Street Law
Georgetown mentors typically pick up ASK participants from D.C. Superior Court once they’ve finished visits with their probation officers and bring them back to Main Campus.
Students also take them to the Law Center’s D.C. Street Law Clinic, which provides law-related educational services. The sessions show ASK participants how the law pertains to their daily existence, Tarlov says.
“They get very frustrated if an officer stops them on the street, and [they] haven’t done anything wrong,” Tarlov says. “At the Law Center they learn about their rights … they learn when they can walk away and when they have to stay.”
ASK is definitely a two-way street, says Jerri Taylor, assistant director of the ASK program.
“The beauty in this for me is seeing the students take away some knowledge,” Taylor says. “They learn they have to play many roles. We have to be father, mother, guidance counselor and at times, probation officer.”
(July 8, 2010)
