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In the News
Tutoring is two-way street for high
school seniors
By Steve Giegerich
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Monday, Apr. 21 2008
St. Louis — Marlys Chambers has seen a lot of high
school students sign up as volunteer tutors at Fanning Middle
School with the best of intentions.
Chambers, who directs the UrbanFuture after-school tutoring
program, said the high school volunteers share a heartfelt
desire to help middle school pupils master the intricacies
of math and communications arts. Many come from the
region's private schools, as part of the nonprofit program's
11-year effort to help struggling students in St. Louis Public
Schools.
Still, Chambers has found that the tutors' altruism is often
accompanied by a desire to polish their college résumés
by mentoring in the urban school district — exactly
the kind of service known to impress college admissions
officers.
It was, in fact, the quest for college that pointed Asheanus
Yancy and Katrina Mason toward UrbanFuture and Fanning.
But there, the similarities between the two and many of the
tutors from elite high schools ended.
Asheanus and Katrina are seniors at Roosevelt High School
in St. Louis.
Like the middle school students they signed up to mentor,
the two know firsthand what it means to strive for an education
from within an urban school district.
"They came in genuinely committed," Chambers said.
And yet, even though Asheanus and Katrina had themselves
once participated in after-school programs in middle school,
neither knew quite what to expect when they first showed
up to volunteer at Fanning last fall.
Instinctively, they turned to the lessons instilled in them
by Kimberly Mason, the mother who nurtured Katrina's education
and Joyce Thomas, the grandmother who put Asheanus on a path
that she hopes will eventually lead to medical school.
"My grandmother and I sat there and we worked and we
worked and we worked," said Asheanus.
So, too, do the students placed in the care of Asheanus and
Katrina.
"I'm here," Asheanus tells them, "just as
long as it takes you to get it."
It didn't take long for Katrina and Asheanus to see the tangible
results of their efforts in the Fanning students.
A humbled Asheanus "can't even describe" the fulfillment
she feels in the hours spent at Fanning.
Two words emerge when she gives it a shot: "warm and
fuzzy."
An afternoon last week found Katrina holding a wide-ranging
tutorial of math and communication arts with three students.
At the next table, Asheanus guided another student through
a writing assignment.
Later, Katrina shrugged off her ability to provide a ready
answer when the definition of a radius arose.
"We use a radius everyday in physics," she explained.
When it comes to tutoring, Chambers pointed out, proximity
in age provides 11th and 12th grade mentors with an edge
when it comes to tutoring younger students.
"The reason it works with high school students is that
subjects like math and science are more immediate to them," she
said. "It's right in their minds."
The narrow age gap between tutors and students also gives
high school mentors an advantage over older mentors, said
Fanning eighth-grade math teacher Christopher Ross.
"A lot of times peer tutors can relate to (younger students)
in a way that makes (math) easier to explain," said
Ross, who has seen a marked improvement in math scores of
the students tutored by Katrina, Asheanus and other
UrbanFuture volunteers.
That's definitely the case with Donna Gladden who, under
Katrina's tutelage, has seen the D's in math she received
as a seventh-grader inch toward a B in her final semester
in the eighth grade.
Her tutor, said Donna, made math fun. More importantly, she "taught
me to keep trying and don't doubt myself."
Katrina deflects her students' success right back at them. "It's
not so much that I give them an answer," she said. "I
give them a clue and let them find it."
With the school year drawing to an end, Asheanus and Katrina
are as awed by an aptitude for teaching they didn't existed
as they are saddened by the prospect of soon bidding farewell
to the eighth-graders they've met week in and week out for
the past year.
But the future beckons.
And when Asheanus heads to the pre-med program at the University
of Missouri and Katrina to the pre-law program at the University
of Nebraska, they'll be leaving more than a group of grateful
students, four years their junior behind.
"When you tutor you really become attached to these
kids," said Katrina. "They become brothers and
sisters."
sgiegerich@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8172
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