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Emily Kearns
For four hours a week during her freshman year, Emily Kearns tutored students at the Commonwealth Tenants Association, a community center inside one of Boston’s public housing projects. She had signed up through 4Boston, a Boston College volunteer program. Each time she sat down to read with the children, Commonwealth’s dismal resources nagged at her. Books were scribbled on, tattered, and dog-eared. The stories, most of them from the 1940s and 1950s, were largely irrelevant to the boys and girls, and most troubling, the children didn’t seem to like reading. “It was so blatant, there was no way to ignore it,” Kearns, a dual major in elementary education and human development, recalls. Perhaps the voice of her mother, a reading specialist, resounded in her head as Kearns became determined to build a library for the community center. She called publishers for donations, but had little success. Then, with the support of the Lynch School of Education, she asked teachers, alumni, and professors to donate any books they could spare, and she asked fellow honors students to bring in a single copy of their favorite children’s book. In all, Kearns has carted close to 2,000 books to the community center. While it is difficult to calculate whether her efforts actually have improved reading levels, she knows that attitudes have changed. The kids used to avoid reading. Now, Kearns says, “you come in with a new box of books, and their eyes light up.” The Commonwealth Tenants Association, in appreciation of the volunteer work that Kearns and her fellow BC students do as tutors and mentors, dedicated a conference room as the Boston College Community Room last April. Kearns, who studied in Ireland during her junior year and worked as an orientation leader and as a greeter in the admissions office, also joined the University’s Appalachia Volunteers during her sophomore year, landing in Grundy, Virginia, where she helped rebuild a home. Kearns, who will go on to pursue a master’s degree in developmental and educational psychology at Boston College, wonders if her determination to fix the wrongs she witnesses stems from her tenuous hold on life as an infant, when she almost died from SIDS-related apnea. “God gives people the chance, the ability to do things,” she says. “I was given a second chance. I can’t just ignore that.” Photo: Emily Kearns in the Educational Resource Center in Campion Hall. |
