Tutoring at Grant Street Neighborhood Center

On 09/14/09 was our orientation where I was assigned to tutor kids every Monday and Wednesday at the Grant Street Neighborhood Center. Since we were late on our first day, we had only ten minutes for the orientation. Briana and Janice were in charge of the Grant Street Neighborhood Center. They explained the rules and told us that we will be tutoring kids who are nine to nineteen years of age. This kind of shocked all of us because we all thought that we will be tutoring kids, who are in the elementary and middle schools.

09/16/09. Because we were late at our first day, we did not have much time to take a tour around the neighborhood center, so our supervisors thought that it will be beneficial, if we took a tour around the neighborhood. Most of the kids were surprised by the west side. The neighborhood did not seem to shock me because I went to Grover Cleveland high school, and I am quite familiar with the Grant Street and with the West side. After the tour, our supervisor introduced us to some kids, who came while we were on the tour, but unfortunately they did not need tutoring because they did not have any homework. They were there to use the computers.

09/21/09. The second week we were assigned to make flyers for the neighborhood center where we had to introduce the center and after school program. At first we thought it will not take that much time to make the flyers, but we did not know that we had to use Windows 98 and dial-up. It took us two hours to make finally a flyer, and we did not even get a chance to interact with kids.

As we arrived at the center on 09/23/09 there was a kid, who had science homework and being the only one with Biology major, I got to help him. I tried to make him feel comfortable; I asked ...

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... answer to this was she send us email where she wrote the date and other details but neither of us got that “email.” Briana was too much; I still don’t understand why she had to embarrass us in front of kids where it was clearly her fault.

The incident on October twenty first was too for us much to overlook, we all decided that we had to talk to Susan about this. We told her about how we were treated and how we are not getting anything out of this experience, and also that is it still possible to switch placements. Susan with Sheryl Bird went to the Grant Street Neighborhood Center and saw it themselves. The center was empty full with kids but neither of them was doing homework only using computers.

On 10/26/09 we went to a new placement, and I love it. It’s an after school program for refugee kids to help them with their homework and improve their English.