"AmeriCorps; Education"

Serving his third AmeriCorps term as a Goodwill Industries of Northern New England member at Youthlinks in Rockland, ME, Gordon Liu has been fundamental in increasing student engagement. As a Program Manager at Youthlinks Gordon empowers students to commit to themselves and their communities, broaden their horizons, and acquire healthy life skills through focused enrichment programs and meaningful volunteer work. In his two years running after-school programming, Gordon has doubled the number of children served by the program, increasing youth participation by 360%. Gordon has also brought in new community partners, and created a volunteer program so that youth who age out can still attend programming as volunteers, simultaneously creating leadership opportunities for older youth and building capacity to serve younger youth.

In an area where 66% of the middle and high school student population are at risk for school failure and almost half report high risk and low protective factors across school, community and family domains, the need for high quality, integrated and intensive academic and enrichment opportunities is evident. Over the past two years, Gordon has directly impacted 206 of these at-risk students. Collaborating with staff from local schools and community-based organizations, Gordon has been able to target and recruit high-risk underperforming students most in need of programming; deliver programming of sufficient intensity and capacity to meet the needs of high-risk and underperforming students and their families; deliver programming explicitly aligned with district curricula and designed to improve individual student learning in core academic areas as well as enrichment areas; strengthen linkages between middle and high school youth and their communities through service learning projects that build youth skills while addressing neighborhood needs; create daily opportunities for youth to build relationships with positive adult role models; and increase student health, nutrition and physical fitness through increased physical activity, and expanded cooking and nutritional programming.

Gordon’s creative approach engages a broad base of youth with varying interests. He acts as an advocate: For service, by participating and engaging youth in community projects; for education, by introducing students to important topics that they are unfamiliar with; for post-secondary opportunity, by organizing college information panels, and for individual self-improvement, by utilizing the cycles of self-esteem to promote an intrinsic motivation for self-improvement. An example of Gordon’s innovation in programming is best noted in the following example. In 2010, Gordon created and implemented a Zombie Apocalypse exercise, in which students play out an end of the world scenario to increase awareness of local disaster services and expose students to best practices in preparedness.

Understanding the importance of family involvement, Gordon supports the middle school’s parent teacher group, and has helped them organize events. He often runs extra programs on the weekends or during break weeks because he sees the need for increased instruction time. Gordon’s passion and commitment to increasing student engagement is undeniable. It has led him to empower the youth he serves, to engage community members, and to make an impact. All while playing a mean game of dodge ball.