Photograph by George Sakkestad
Fremont seniors Aasia Hameed and Sabahat Mehdi study in the school's tutoring center.
By KATHERINE PETERSEN
Eiei Khin, a sophomore at Fremont High School, tutors her fellow students in math, chemistry and beginning Spanish at the campus's new tutorial center. She earns credits for helping other students while relearning skills she may have forgotten.
"I would have to go back and study some math skills anyway before taking calculus next year," said Khin, 15. "It's really good because I meet all these different people from different classes, and I enjoy being able to help them."
Some student tutors also work with elementary and middle-school students at Sunnyvale's schools. Khin, however, keeps busy enough tutoring high school classmates in difficult subjects, including how to do research on the Internet.
Khin tutors students according to the classes they take, not their grade levels. "A lot of people feel kind of strange being tutored by someone who's in a lower grade," she said. "I'm tutoring a friend who's a junior, and she's feeling bad because I'm a sophomore and I'm in a [more advanced] class."
Many students would accept a bad grade and take a class again rather than admit they need tutoring, Moberly said. Her challenge is to overcome the stigma involved in asking for help.
"It will be a slow cultural change," she said. "Knowing it's OK to ask for assistance will help students succeed and make school easier for them."
The tutoring program, which started this year, receives funding from the state's Department of Education. The program's peer tutoring is already established; now, program director Adrienne Moberly plans to recruit mentors from the community and local businesses to match with students. Mentors will help students with schoolwork and share an adult perspective with the teenagers.
Moberly hopes retirees, local employees and residents will join the tutoring program. "Mentors will work one on one with students or come into the classroom," Moberly said. The goal is to raise the student's grade by one letter, she added.
Kate Lazarus, a Fremont parent who is waiting for a match, has always enjoyed helping kids and has been involved in other tutoring programs at the elementary and middle-school levels.
"I believe all these kids have qualities of intelligence and wisdom and joy that need to be uncovered and that a mentor-tutor can have the role of helping to uncover those and encouraging children to express them in their lives and do better in school," she said.
Lazarus feels comfortable tutoring in math, reading, writing, English or whatever the student needs.
"It's very rewarding to see a kid who has been struggling with schoolwork gradually come to realize that they can do the work," she said.
Kids will then develop more confidence in themselves and be less likely to drop out of school, she added.
At first, some kids feel embarrassed that they need tutors, but Lazarus said the right approach can help them see tutoring as a privilege.
"I would want to get to know the student and tell him or her something about myself, my background and my family so we could get to be friends," Lazarus said. "That way the student will know I'm interested in him or her as a person, and that will create an atmosphere in which working on academic needs is more easily accomplished."
Many of the students might not have adults with whom they can share their concerns or spend time, such as going to athletic events or to the theater.
"The program is designed to add an adult presence in their lives where they may need more than they have," Lazarus said.
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, April 2, 1997.
©1997 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.