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News & Events - Student Stories
If You Scoop It, They Will Come
Catherine Schmidt, 1C1C Fellow
It’s a June evening, and we’re doing what Mississippians do best on these balmy summer nights: sitting on a porch talking. The porch is the Mid-Jackson Family Resource Center’s, and the people are the three Millsaps 1 Campus, 1 Community staff members and families from the North Midtown neighborhood across the street from the college. The new 1C1C staffers have invited the residents of North Midtown to a meet-and-greet Ice Cream Icebreaker, luring parents and kids out of air-conditioned homes with the philosophy that “if you scoop it, they will come.” And they’ve come. Over ice cream cones, we get the scoop.
We have four guided questions for the parents: How long have you lived in the neighborhood? What makes you most proud of your neighborhood? What makes you most proud of your kids? What are some ways in which you would like to see Millsaps and North Midtown collaborate? To the kids, we ask: What are you doing this summer? What’s your favorite subject in school? How would you like to see Millsaps and North Midtown work together?
We informally talk to each attendee, first introducing ourselves to our North Midtown neighbors. Then, we listen. We discover there are many young budding scientists in our neighborhood, and for that matter, many enthusiastic basketball players. From the parents we hear impassioned support of the active community members, like the group of mothers who have started Weight Watchers together and host a book club.
We talk to a mother who was displaced from New Orleans in 2005 after Katrina and made her home in North Midtown in a Habitat for Humanity house. She tells us she loves the 1Campus, 1Community Block Party, an afternoon when the Millsaps campus opens its gates and welcomes our North Midtown neighbors for a cookout and student-led activities for children.
“I think it would be great,” she says, “if, being a college, you could do something to promote education and college to our children.” We tell her about the Sophomore Showcase we hosted last year in which nearby high school sophomores visited the campus for a day and had exposure to the college experience through presentations from students and faculty. We discuss the possibility of hosting a similar interactive day geared toward a younger age group to initiate early college interest in North Midtown children from Brown Elementary and Rowan Middle School.
One rising sixth grader tells us that what he thinks the neighborhood needs is more home ownership. “It makes sense,” he tells us. “The people who rent don’t care as much about what happens to their home.” We applaud his keen perception and talk about the issue with him. He then says that he thinks there should be a kid-led newspaper for the neighborhood. The idea seems ambitious and fruitful from the start, and later as the 1C1C staffers reflect on these conversations, we discuss the first steps for turning these dreams into the reality of meaningful partnerships with our neighbors.
“How cool would it be,” we dream and scheme, “if we had the sixth grade class at Rowan interview people in the neighborhood and write articles for a North Midtown kid’s paper?” What confidence and empowerment would be ignited in these young minds in reporting on their community and in seeing their names and work in print, we realize.
We learned a couple things that night: If you scoop it, they will come. And if you listen, they will tell.
Catherine Schmidt
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