While the College of William and Mary is bursting with on-campus clubs, events and activities, students in one particular organization choose to venture into the community during their extra time.
Griffin School Partnerships is a collaboration between student leaders and the College’s Office of Civic and Community Engagement. A volunteer-based organization, the club provides support to elementary and middle school students in the Williamsburg area through three main programs: after-school tutoring and homework help, the Literacy Lab and mentorship.
GSP members give back to the local community in a way that feels personal to them.
“I was in after-school programs a lot when I was a kid, and I think they’re very impactful in the community because they’re providing an essential extension of school hours for working parents,” GSP communications and logistics coordinator Nathan Yang ’28 said. “So to be able to offer that free of charge is really valuable for us.”
Despite being a volunteer organization, GSP extensively trains its members to ensure they provide high-quality, meaningful help to students. Beyond academic and curricular training, volunteers are held to a high professional standard.
“All of our volunteers are actually mandated reporters in the state of Virginia, so they have to take training from the Department of Social Services,” Yang said. “They have a little Blackboard module they have to do, they have to do a background check that we run for them and they have to register with school districts as well.”
Despite this extensive training, the club offers lots of flexibility in terms of levels of involvement. This allows GSP to maximize the impact of their efforts. They currently have around 30 to 40 consistent volunteers and 10 to15 students involved in the mentorship program.
“That program is really great because it sort of allows a very one-on-one connection to be built between our volunteers and students,” Yang said.
Once a week, mentors travel to participating schools during their lunchtimes to meet with their mentees, creating positive and long-lasting relationships throughout the academic year.
In order to reach local students outside of the school day and accommodate college students who are in class during the daytime, GSP’s other programs, including Literacy Lab and Mission Launch tutoring, extend beyond local schools
“I was actually at a community center in a subsidized housing neighborhood, Lafayette Village Apartments,” club member Piper Buswell ’27 said. “We were partnering with the organization that does community events there.”
Working on Literacy Lab, a one-on-one tutoring program for students who struggle with reading, at the community center has taught Buswell how to creatively engage students with curriculum.
“There was a time that we were doing a picture book about pumpkins rotting. It was also sort of sciencey,” she said. “But I was like, ‘Okay, they’re really not gonna want to do this, it’s about pumpkin rotting.’ So me and the other volunteers, we all took turns reading a page, and we did a funny voice for each different character, and they really liked it. And then we started asking them to come up and do a page in their own voice to practice reading out loud, and they had so much fun.”
Stories like that are widespread across GSP’s programs and the age group they serve.
“I worked with first graders, and they were so sweet, a little bit sassy, but really great,” Yang said. “At the end of the semester, they wrote me this little card that they had all signed with their names, and it was really sweet.”
Meanwhile, mentoring coordinator Colleen Weir ’27 said she enjoys working with slightly older students.
“It’s a very formative time, middle school, and I think middle schoolers really benefit from William and Mary students who just see and know and love them as they are in that transformative phase,” Weir said.
Volunteers creating joy in the little moments cultivate a widespread impact for students and volunteers alike. Even volunteers who do not intend to pursue careers in education find ways that their work is influencing their life and future plans.
“I’ve always wanted to be a doctor, but I really want to work in pediatrics now,” Yang said. “It was those first graders, man. They were so much fun, and I’d love to do that for the rest of my life.”
As volunteers teach students, they are also learning more about themselves.
“They’re so bright, and they have such bright futures, and I think I just learned that you really have to just leave all of your preconceptions at the door and just encounter the person you’re with in the moment, because they will surprise you,” Buswell said.
While the relationships between volunteers and students are already strong, GSP’s executive board has a particular focus this year: strengthening bonds between fellow volunteers.
“We’re really pushing this year the idea of not just having more volunteers, but also having a stronger community of volunteers,” Yang said. “One thing that I’ve always personally felt GSP has lacked as an organization is that sense of camaraderie, and we’re all in this together. We’re thinking about introducing some more regular club meetings where we actually have people come together and talk about their experiences.”
Cultivating this community is a priority for Weir in particular.
“Ensuring that everyone is building wonderful friendships with those they’re volunteering with from William and Mary is really important,” she said. “I think that makes GSP really special, when we can cultivate those friendships and really base them in service and working for other people.”
Volunteering has provided meaningful experiences for participants that they’re carrying with them through college and beyond.
“It’s truly such a life-changing organization,” Weir said. “I think that it really gets at the real-life connections that we all crave, especially working with students, being able to use the gift of our education here at William and Mary to help other people.”
