Do Good Well: Resources for Student Organizations Serving K-12 Students

Over the years, many U-M student organizations have engaged in volunteering with public schools, libraries, and community nonprofits to provide tutoring and academic support to K-12 youth. Serving this population requires extensive collaboration between students and teachers or school staff to create programming, build relationships, recruit volunteers, and manage logistics. To support campus and community partners taking on this challenging commitment, the Ginsberg Center’s 2021-2022 AmeriCorps VISTA member Christina France led the development of the Do Good Well K-12 Support Volunteer Handbook.

There are over 1600 student organizations registered at the University of Michigan, and 200 to 300 of those work with K-12 students. The Volunteer Handbook supports the positive impact U-M students are making in the lives of young people by providing a single platform for student organizations to access resources, plan out action steps, and deepen engagement practices, relieving some of the burden on student organizations and those that engage with them. The handbook includes resources for program design and implementation, volunteer role development, recruitment and retainment, orientation and training, screening and placement, and supervision and assessment. These resources are all guided by the principles developed by RECAP, a partnership between Ginsberg, Center for Educational Outreach and the School of Education to coordinate and strengthen our work with K-12 schools in Michigan: Relationships, Equity, Compliance, Awareness, and Power. Brendan Gallagher, Ginsberg's Student Outreach and Engagement Manager and one of the handbook developers, hopes that it can serve as "a centralized place to find the resources that students need, that's also easy to navigate. I hope that it serves as a gathering point for student organizations to use resources together, that can be a springboard into the work that they're doing."

The Volunteer Handbook emerged directly from conversations with student organizations serving K-12 populations. In Spring 2020, the Ginsberg Center sponsored a convening of student organizations and representatives from Ann Arbor Public Schools in order to address challenges to K-12 support in the context of COVID-19. The convening ultimately led to the formation of a K-12 Outreach Community of Practice, a grassroots coalition of student organizations supporting one another in K-12 service. Ongoing conversations between this community and Christina France ultimately led to the creation of a handbook that matched student priorities with best practices in the fields of K-12 education and community engagement.

The idea for a centralized resource emerged from the priorities of K-12 support groups, but it had wider repercussions for UM's student service landscape. The Do Good Well platform was developed as a parent site for the K-12 Handbook, and curates more broadly-applicable resources for student organizations that address leadership, equitable engagement, and organizational longevity. "I think what makes this resource so effective," said Gallagher, "is that the entirety of the process was influenced by students." That approach extended not only to Do Good Well's and the K-12 Handbook's content, but also to their digital format. "We were thinking about functionality and content, but also aesthetics. We wanted to make something that looks good and feels good, because we know that students aren't going to use it if it’s not user-friendly."

Accessibility was a critical consideration in the development of these resources, and Gallagher notes that he's eager to learn more about how students are actually using the Do Good Well site and the K-12 handbook. In the future, he plans to organize focus groups that can inform decisions about how Do Good Well can be improved, expanded, and updated in the future. If you are a student seeking support for using these resources, interested in contributing to these conversations, or a community member seeking K-12 support, please reach out to the Ginsberg Center!