Aaron Massey ’10 – ACTION RESEARCH CENTER at Illinois Wesleyan University

Year of Graduation: Class of 2010
Major: Sociology-Urban and Community Development
Current Address: Baton Rouge, LA

How were you engaged in ARC? Not just the seminar/internship/fellowship, but describe the project.
During my ARC internship, I worked with the West Bloomington Task Force (as it was called then) and as an intern at State Farm’s Human Resources Department. With the task force, I was fortunate enough to work as the interim green team and youth team lead where our major project was to start a community garden on the west side of Bloomington. This took the phrase “grass-roots” to a whole new meaning. I worked with members of the Master Gardeners, City of Bloomington, and community leaders around the area to help start a community managed garden. This meant not only making presentations at a city open-house; this also meant walking door to door to talk to neighbors around the area to see how we will keep that space sacred. At State Farm, I help produce training program for new managers coming to the company.

Where are you now?

Now, I am the founding Academy Director for Democracy Prep Baton Rouge, an open enrollment public charter school with a track record of 100% college placement, but, more importantly, 97% persistence.

“Get your morning Joe and get after it”
-Aaron Massey

Where did ARC take you professionally? Are you doing work that connects back to ARC in some way?

My work now is undoubtedly related to my experience with ARC; both the internship and the seminar. One thing we learned from day one was the value of and how to leverage the strengths of individuals in the community, how to mobilize a group of individuals around a common cause for good in the community and how to be an assets based thinker no matter what the situation. As the founding Academy Director, my team and I had to go door to door and listen to the needs of the community to assess what they really wanted/needed in a community school. Listening to the community is a skill that is invaluable. Moreover, we had to get families to sign up their scholars. Talk about talking points! This mean we had to get a quick gauge of what families wanted, tell them about how we were different than the local public schools and charter schools that had failed them before, and impress upon them the need to go to college in about five minutes. I learned that skill from ARC. Finally, one of the biggest lessons I learned in the ARC seminar, specifically, is the need to follow up and often. This was especially difficult for me while I was in the program because I wanted to be involved with every aspect of the program, University, and community that I could. While that desire is admirable, it takes away from being able to be truly there for the people you make commitments to. Deborah taught that to me directly 🙂

Where did ARC take you personally? Are you engaged in community work that is ARC-like?

Personally, I must say that my professional life is personal work right now. The same building, same community that I am operating in now is the same exact building and community I worked in before upon graduating from IWU. I started as a middle school math teacher there and coming back as the school leader. The reason, though, is based in my understanding of my duty to communities I learn from. That’s a concept I learned in ARC. After graduate school, I moved to Chicago to work at a high school but didn’t feel that I fulfilled my duty to this community so I came back.

Did ARC teach you what we were supposed to teach you? Did we teach you anything that was a surprise or outside of the learning objectives?

What ARC did was teach me the operating theories in the community development world and then made them real in the Bloomington community. I read about asset based thinking and then I did it. As an educator, that level of practice is completes the full circle of learning. What ARC did was teach me how to focus and follow-through instead of hope things get better. What ARC did was teach me that I was the leader I wanted the whole time. I just needed the right training from the right people.

Share a great memory about ARC/IWU.
One of my favorite memories is first going to the plot of land the City of Bloomington gave us to start the garden. A couple of us were out there trying to clean some of the trash and sticks when a guy that worked just behind the plot saw us. There were a couple a big branches that he knew would impede on our progress. What does he do? Goes and grabs a chain saw and begins to action-tutor me how to cut this branch. That day, I didn’t wake up thinking, “I’m probably going to be given a chain saw and taught how to cut a large tree branch in real time today.” But it happened.