Local AmeriCorps implement community service

Coaching wrestling, helping with the Special Olympics, and organizing projects middle school and high school students can do help the community are ways Robert Duerst, Viterbo post baccalaureate teacher licensure student from Duluth, Minn., spends his days. 

Duerst is a quarter-time YES AmeriCorps member in La Crosse. Not only does he get to pursue the activities he loves, he receives a stipend for the 500 hours of community service work he has been doing from Jan. 2010 until June. 

“Joining AmeriCorps has given me an excellent opportunity to learn more about service learning projects,” Duerst told Lumen. “As a member, I have access to training programs to further advance my professional skills.”

Pursuing a teaching certification for biology, chemistry, and broad field science, Duerst fulfills his 500 hours with student teaching among other projects. Duerst incorporates service learning values instilled through AmeriCorps into his student teaching. 

“My high school chemistry students put together recycling bins for compact fluorescent light bulbs that were covered with information about the importance of not throwing them away,” Duerst said.      

Duerst has worked with his middle school students decorating grocery bags with recycling policies of the city of Holmen. Festival Foods uses the bags to inform the customers of proper procedures. 

“My experiences with AmeriCorps have helped to reinforce teaching requires planning, and the more planning you do the smoother your lessons will go,” Duerst said. 

Duerst plans on using what he’s learned through AmeriCorps the rest of his life. “As a teacher, I plan on incorporating service learning into my classroom.”

YES AmeriCorps in La Crosse began in 1996 with 20 members. Fifteen years later, it has expanded to include 48 members from the surrounding areas of La Crosse, said Katie Groves, YES AmeriCorps program staff and alum, who served two terms as an AmeriCorps member from 2004-2006.

YES AmeriCorps is a national and community service organization working for domestic peace and serving western Wisconsin sites, Groves said.