Volunteer tutors and students interact at sites all around Kansas City, Kan., as part of The Learning Club. // Courtesy Photo
With teacher shortages looming nationwide, The Learning Club is doing its part to provide extra help for students and develop some homegrown teaching talent. The program focuses on helping children in the Kansas City, Kansas schools grow to meet their academic potential.
The tutoring component of the program mostly focuses on elementary school students, although they’re trying to develop more of a middle school presence. Kids can interact with the tutors at one of six in-school sites or five satellite sites, located near spots with public housing.
“The whole goal of Learning Club is to work with the kids who have the most hurdles to access programing after school. We go to community centers. We take everything we need for programming. Volunteers go to site, so that way kids and their grownups don’t have to worry about transportation at all,” says Mia Gardner, volunteer and marketing coordinator for The Learning Club.
The program has gathered traction, as numbers keep getting bigger each year, currently serving 430 kids each week.
Depending on the site, children get one day of after-school tutoring from adult volunteers and may also get a second day with the high school interns that the program is coaching to become teachers.
In addition to practicing their teaching skills as tutors, the interns get lessons for themselves on practical matters—making professional phone calls, prepping for the SAT, creating a basic budget from a teacher’s salary, and more.
Volunteer tutors and students interact at sites all around Kansas City, Kan., as part of The Learning Club. // Courtesy Photo
Also intended to help increase the district’s graduation rate, the program provides a five-year $2,500 renewable college scholarship for those pursuing a career in education.
There are a few teachers in KCK schools already who have followed that path all the way from The Learning Club to the front of a classroom.
Tutoring can be on any subject and can include helping with homework or just focusing one-on-one with skill boosting. The simplest tasks, such as reading to and with the children, go a long way.
“Lots of studies indicate that being at a third-grade level or higher is what will help you be able to do all the things you need to do as a grownup,” Gardner says. “We want to see a student’s reading levels go up throughout the school year and for them to become more confident readers. One of the goals of Learning Club is for students to enjoy reading.”
Aadesh Biswa was one of these students, and, now, he’s a site director for The Learning Club. When he came to the United States from a refugee camp in Nepal, he was 13 and had a lot of catching up to do. He found The Learning Club through his 10-year-old sister.
“I was in 7th grade, and, all of a sudden, I just felt that I was behind. I was in first grade or kindergarten or something, and I needed to catch up,” Biswa says.
Volunteer tutors and students interact at sites all around KCK as part of The Learning Club. // Courtesy Photo
His tutor helped him with homework and reading.
“At the time, I could barely formulate a sentence, and I was very shy. I remember we were reading a book, and, in that book, there was a phrase, and he asked, ‘Do you know what this phrase means?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘This phrase makes me think of you.’ And the phrase is ‘diamond in the rough.’ I remember, after that, it gave me such confidence to be able go back to school and try actually writing things,” Biswa said.
He later volunteered himself, becoming a high school intern. “This is exactly where I’m meant to be, I think,” Biswa says.
Currently, he’s finishing up his degree at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. As a site director, Biswa is excited to be learning new skills about running a non-profit and partnering with schools.
“I want to take more of a leadership position. I keep telling Laura [Swan, executive director of The Learning Club] that I am going to run The Learning Club one day. If not Learning Club, it will be something like Learning Club,” Biswa says.
The Learning Club will work with volunteers on their schedules, but to help foster an environment where students can really connect with the tutors, they’d like to have people commit to a regular volunteer slot. Many of their current volunteers are medical students at Kansas City University or retirees.
“If we had more volunteers, we could easily serve more students. There’s easily 100 kids or more at the St Margaret’s site, and we have about 20 volunteers there,” Gardner says.
For more information on how to volunteer, visit their site.
Volunteer tutors and students interact at sites all around Kansas City, Kan., as part of The Learning Club. // Courtesy Photo