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Learn and Serve America |
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Ross Louis |
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Xavier University |
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Students at Xavier University, a historically Black college in New Orleans, are required to take a course in public speaking, so finding a way to turn a requirement into an honors section proved to be something of a challenge for Ross Louis, an assistant professor of communications, and his colleagues. They hit on the idea of adding a service-learning component as a way of using pubic speaking to create positive societal changes. Louis has spent three semesters overseeing a total of about 35 freshman honors students as they not only studied public speaking, but taught it as well, to students at Thurgood Marshall Middle School in New Orleans. For two of the semesters, the course focused on the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision requiring school desegregation. Voting rights was the theme for the other semester. With the college students as mentors, the middle school students interviewed local residents who were active during the struggle for civil rights, or worked with a research center that has a collection of school integration interviews. Each semester closed with the middle school students giving speeches on the theme topics, while Xavier students looked on with a mixture of pride and apprehension. |
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