This fall, the McDonough School of Business started sending 14 students to tutor at D.C. Preparatory School, a District charter middle school that serves students in the 4th through 8th grades, as a new pilot program to incorporate community service into their curriculum. Next semester, MSB students will be able to participate in the program as a fourth credit option.
The pilot program joins the ranks of tutoring programs that already exist at Georgetown, including D.C. Schools and D.C. Reads. These programs have had a significant effect on both Georgetown students and the District’s public school students, but the tutoring experience is not problem-free.
D.C. Schools volunteers begin tutoring after a four-hour training session, and have more training throughout the semester. Program Coordinator Claire Libert (SFS ’09) said that the training is “thorough” and that throughout the semester, meetings are held at her house where questions and issues are addressed.
D.C. Reads also has extensive training sessions for their tutors. “The training was pretty good,” Raughley Nuzzi (SFS ‘09) said. “They gave us practice exercises that you would use on the person sitting on your left. I thought the training was pretty good at preparing us for the teaching part, but maybe not as good at preparing us to deal with little kids.”
The MSB program took a different approach, hosting training dinners throughout the semester, where speakers came and gave information behind the charter system and how the school works.
“I don’t really know education tactics,” Stephanie Sawda (MSB ‘09) said. “The teacher had handbooks she would show me. Apparently at the 6th grade level, students don’t have the whole memorization process anymore, so flashcards don’t work very well. So I had to learn and research different techniques to teach them. We learned about the D.C. Prep system and how to deal with the students, but no real practical training ”
Apart from improving their students’ academics, a key component of these programs is the mentoring aspect.
During one of his D.C. Schools tutoring sessions, Joe Vaughan (COL ’08) and his two students were writing a letter to the Vice Principal demanding a re-match of a faculty vs. student soccer game in which the students lost. Forgetting the Vice Principal name, the students started the letter with “Dear Mr. Baldie.” Vaughan quickly said that that was not a good idea. “Why? He’s bald!” one of the students said. Enjoying themselves, Vaughan and his two students launched into a lesson on how to write a formal letter, a practcal approach that integrated life skills with their usual grammar lessons.
Many tutors and teachers laud the program’s effects on their students over the course of the semester.
“For some of the students that I’ve taught, I have seen improvement with the students that have consistently stuck with the program,” Erika Pereira, an English teacher at MacFarland school said
Despite these successes, some tutors feel that their attempt to help is ineffective and have a hard time establishing meaningful relationships with their students.
“I personally don’t feel I had much of an influence,” former D.C. Schools tutor Brian Fochtman (COL ’10) said. “One of my kids eventually stopped showing up. And my other student, we would get to the material but he would pretend not to remember things from lesson to lesson.”
Fochtman also said that the tutors could have had more time with the kids and felt that most of the students who were in the program didn’t seem to want to be there for the hour and a half they were with the tutors.
“Children come with issues, so there’s not always a match,” ESL teacher Adam Blankenship said. “Some of it has to do with the personality of children and some of it has to do with the maturity of tutors. Some of the ways they react depends on age and is outside the students’ power.”
Pereira said that she has seen improvement in what the D.C. Schools tutors choose to teach their students from year to year. During a tutoring session last year, she noticed that one of the tutors was teaching a student Einee Meenie Miney Moe.
“I just didn’t see it being incorporated well,” she said. “It was just a random thing she was trying to do with the kid.”
But this year, Pereira said that GU students’ approach to tutoring has become more streamlined due to more focus on reading strategies.
However, the tutoring program is still struggling in some areas. Because No Child Left Behind designated MacFarland as a “failing school,” the school has lost most of its kids to charter schools. Last year, the program had 55 ESL students and this year, the number has decreased significantly to 33.The number of tutors has decreased as well, from 27 to 17.
“It’s hard to recruit for middle schoolers,” Libert said. “The elementary schools have a much easier time recruiting.” Libert said that because many middle adolescents are at a difficult stage, many tutors are hesitant to work with them.
“The program has been evolving and has been getting better each year,” Blankinship said. “There has been a profound effect not only in terms of literacy, but in mentoring and the connections that the students make with the college student.
-Additional reporting by Brittany Keates
