Rising up: Tutoring

2022 | Written by Faith Schantz, Report Editor

Children who lost crucial learning time during the pandemic, and those who weren’t well served before, need new forms of academic support. Research shows that one of the most effective strategies to help students reach grade-level goals is “high impact” tutoring—meeting with the same tutor one-on-one or in a small group several times a week over many months.

The city schools are using federal pandemic recovery funds to provide tutoring after school. As the school year began, Superintendent Walters said many schools were working with existing partners while others were “just beginning to frame” their after-school learning opportunity. Early this fall, the district released an RFP (Request for Proposal) for in-person after-school programming; Walters says another RFP is forthcoming for providers who offer tutoring services virtually.

In the wider community, efforts to address students’ academic needs began in the spring of 2020 after schools closed. Organizations that had provided in-person tutoring moved their work online, and others added a tutoring component for the first time. A+ Schools, along with a group of community partners, started what’s come to be known as the Pittsburgh Learning Collaborative (PLC) as a response to the pandemic. Over the past three years, the PLC has grown to become a coalition of almost 90 organizations that support students and families, with academic support as one of its focus areas.

OpenLiteracy and ASSET (Achieving Student Success through Excellence in Teaching) are two local organizations that pivoted to offer tutoring. OpenLiteracy, founded by Sarah Scott Frank, has provided tutoring through out-of-school-time providers and currently partners with the Environmental Charter School at Frick Park (ECS), serving almost 100 ECS students virtually. Tutoring is offered for free by the school. ECS pays OpenLiteracy with federal pandemic relief funds, and Frank in turn pays her tutors, who are students at top colleges around the country.

ASSET created the PALS (Partnerships to Advance Learning in STEM) program not only to help children, but also for the sake of college students in education programs (known as “pre-service” teachers) who were missing out on classroom experiences. The PALS model brings pre-service teachers together with K-12 students who participate in after-school programs or through drop-in hours. ASSET staff created and piloted PALS in coordination with A+ Schools, the PLC, and Duquesne University.

Whether it’s face-to-face or through a screen, the relationship between a student and a tutor is key. Deborah Luckett, associate executive director of ASSET, says that came as a surprise to many of their pre-service teachers, who said they hadn’t realized how important relationships were to learning until they started tutoring. In the first training session, “We’re clear with them,” she says. “Don’t just jump into work. Get to know the students, ask them questions.”

Frank says OpenLiteracy tutoring has “a big mentoring piece.” Students see that their tutors have “made it to a college, and they’re at good colleges,” including CMU, and colleges students have heard of because their football games are on TV. Students see their tutors’ dorm rooms or the campus union; they ask questions and the tutors share their experiences. She’s also been able to create a tutoring workforce that is much more diverse than the local teaching corps. “We had a Puerto Rican family who was matched with a Puerto Rican tutor who was a student at Yale, and the tutor spoke Spanish with the mom,” she says. “That student’s attendance was amazing that semester.” Some of her tutors are first-generation college students, many of whom participated in similar programs at younger ages. Frank says, “They’re thrilled to be a tutor in a program that’s serving K-12 kids.”

Luckett has seen students’ sense of agency—the belief that they have a say in what happens to them—blossom over the course of tutoring sessions. She notes that students who sign up are often the ones who don’t advocate for themselves at school or who process things differently than other children. Compared to a noisy classroom with other students racing to answer a teacher’s questions, tutoring proceeds at a child’s pace, toward goals the child has helped to define. And PALS students know their tutors are also students. Once, when Luckett was monitoring a session, a 2nd grader reached out through the chat. “I know he’s learning to be a teacher,” the student said, referring to his tutor. “But he doesn’t know how to ask questions. …I keep telling him I don’t understand it. And he keeps repeating the same question.” Monitors request feedback from students if they don’t offer it. “This is an experiment,” Luckett tells the students. “And it’s an experiment that involves you.” Such experiences give students a sense of ownership, she says, which promotes greater learning.

While schools are open this year, Luckett and Frank both say that tutoring is here to stay, and so is the virtual learning space. Luckett tells pre-service teachers that to be an educator in the 21st Century, “You need to learn how to teach in this space and be present in this space.” Superintendent Walters notes that when learning moved online, students showed their teachers the extent to which they live in a technological world. Sometimes that dawned on teachers when students volunteered to be tech support during class. For those teachers who were willing to flip roles, “it put them in a truly vulnerable space,” he says. “But it also put them in a lifelong learning community.”

Students were “shaping the experience of learning” in those cases. As one of the lessons of the pandemic, “That should have been the design to begin with,” he says.

Pittsburgh has many options for students to participate in tutoring, mentoring, and after-school programs that meet their interests. To request information about tutoring opportunities, complete this form or call the PLC Family Hotline at 412-256-8536. You can view a list of partnering organizations on the Pittsburgh Learning Collaborative website.