By Walt Bennett

For The Courier-Herald

On the Wednesday before Christmas break, I received an e-mail from a parent in the White River School District. Her student had fallen significantly behind in an advanced math class and she was hoping there was something we could do to help. I pointed her to our online registration and told her our last evening for high school students before the break would be Thursday from 6 to 9 p.m. Within an hour, I received an e-mail notification that the online registration had been completed.

The next day they showed up at 6 p.m. at our Buckley location. Mark Thompson – who wrote one of our student success stories in the fall – was there to help. They worked diligently throughout the evening with new revelations coming fast and furious. The following day, I received a wonderful e-mail from the parent. She took the time to provide immediate feedback on her student’s experience. Although he was resistant to the idea of going to the tutoring center in the first place, upon exiting for the evening he confided to his mother that he had learned more math in those few hours than he had all year in class – and enjoyed it to boot!

Now, I want to be clear (pardon the Obamaism) – this is in no way intended to illustrate any lack on the part of the teacher or the school. I share this to demonstrate the advantages we have with the opportunity to spend more focused time with students one-on-one. Mark was able to try several different approaches to explaining things with this student. This is a luxury that a classroom teacher addressing 20 to 30 students in one hour does not have. The content was there – floating around in this student’s head – because of all the work the teacher had gone through. We just helped put it all together in a context and fashion to which this student could relate.

This is where we fit in – hand in hand with the teachers and schools. We are here to support what happens in the classroom. It is this kind of affirmation of our work that keeps our volunteers coming back week after week.

The Numbers

Since my last report of numbers, we have had 46 new students register bringing us to a cumulative total of 384.

October through December we have delivered 739 hours of free tutoring in the following areas: math, 60 percent; reading, 10 percent; English, 9 percent; writing, 6 percent; history and government, 5 percent; science, 3 percent; Spanish, 3 percent; English as a second language, 2 percent; and 2 percent other.

Thank you to all our dedicated volunteer tutors.