Mahiyat: An AmeriCorps Volunteer Doesn't Get to Say Goodbye
Updated December 7, 2020
When SaverLife spoke to Mahiyat in May, she was still reeling from the sudden end of the school year, but had hopes of seeing her students in person again. We caught up with Mahiyat in December to find out how her situation has changed and if she was ever able to say goodbye to her students.
“The only time I went back to the school was to get my stuff over the summer,” Mahiyat said. The students she worked with had difficulty setting up for remote schooling, so Mahiyat was only able to continue working with two of her students during the shutdown. She never got the chance to say a proper goodbye to her students or coworkers.
She did set up a fundraiser to help get giftcards for groceries for some of the families she worked with.
“Even staying at home, you can still do something to help,” she said.
Mahiyat is still living with her parents and looking for work in the nonprofit sector. One of the biggest ironies of all this is that two weeks before the shutdown she was offered a job—but turned it down because she didn’t feel right leaving her students in the middle of the school year.
Although she’s continued doing some virtual tutoring on the side, she doesn’t know what she would do financially without her parents’ support. She is looking for remote positions so that she won’t worry about contracting COVID-19. She recently had an interview with a nonprofit in the area, and hoped to hear back from them soon.
“I hope to get a full time job doing something that is meaningful like what I did working as a teacher,” Mahiyat said.
When Mahiyat started her final year as a teacher in Virginia, she had no idea she wouldn’t get the chance to say goodbye. Mahiyat, an AmeriCorps volunteer who has been working at the same Title 1 elementary school for two years, knew this was her last year with her students. She just wasn’t expecting a pandemic to rob her of the chance to say goodbye to her students, who range in age from kindergarten to second grade.
“Friday, March 13th, started out as a normal day. As the kids were leaving I said, ‘See you on Monday!’ We found out after they left we would be closed for a month. I really didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to them. I have been teaching for two years, so of course, I have become very attached to them,” she said.
The governor of Virginia later announced schools would be closed for the rest of the year. Mahiyat has been doing some classes with her students over video, but misses the social aspect of school. She lives with her parents, neither of whom are working after her father lost his job due to COVID. Mahiyat is getting paid her small AmeriCorps stipend and makes a little extra money tutoring on Skype, but has lost pay she used to receive for after school programming. She is job hunting, but she’s nervous about her chances. “I don’t even know if I am going to find anything — if anyone is hiring right now,” she said.
Mahiyat used some of her SaverLife $500 emergency cash payment to pay her student loans. The rest she put directly into savings to ride out the next few months of uncertainty. Mahiyat has been a SaverLife member for about a year, and added the payment to an account she has been building up as best she can with her small stipend. “You guys definitely taught me that even if it's $5, that’s $5 you didn’t have before. That’s $20 a month more than the month before. It adds up, anything you can put towards yourself.”
Mahiyat is looking forward to seeing her friends and family again after lockdown is lifted, especially her cousins in the area. And of course, she’s also already (hopefully) planning visits back to school in the fall to see her students.