Successful N.J. summer tutoring program is expanding this fall

NJ Summer Tutoring Corp program

The NJ Summer Tutoring Corps Program served 2,000 students this past summer. Ninety tutors also gained teaching experience.Provided by Katherine Bassett

To the outside observer, it was just a dark brown pen that looked like a wand.

But to the kids at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Mercer County site in Lawrenceville, it was the “Harry Potter pen” their tutor owned that they all wanted to use. And to one incoming fourth-grader in particular, it was an incentive to learn.

The students were participating in the free NJ Summer Tutoring Corps Program, a program designed to address pandemic-related learning loss for kindergarten through fifth grade students.

New Jersey students likely lost about 30% of expected learning in English and 36% in math by the beginning of the 2020-21 school year, according to a report released in March by the advocacy group JerseyCAN.

Launched by The College of New Jersey’s School of Education, and paid for by a combined $2.4 million grant from the New Jersey Pandemic Relief Fund and the Overdeck Family Foundation, the program ran for eight weeks starting in June.

Tutors met with small groups of three to four students in one-hour sessions, three times a week, to go through a math curriculum. The program served students attending summer programming at 23 sites throughout the state, including 16 Boys & Girls Clubs.

Mysti Diaz, a tutor at both the Lawrenceville and Trenton site, recalled the fourth-grader she had could not read or do basic addition. He also often had behavioral issues, which Diaz viewed as the result of a lack of confidence.

“But on my time with him, I showed him that there’s just no judgement. Okay, you don’t understand this, you don’t know this?” she recalled saying. “Let’s go back and let’s use this multiplication chart.”

By the end of the program, the boy kept asking Diaz if he could join more small group sessions every time she went to get more kids. He also got to use her wand pen each time he worked with her.

At the end of her time with the kids she tutored, Diaz ordered some Harry Potter-themed pencils on Amazon to give them a small gift.

“I taped that into their workbooks when I left, just to say ‘Have a magical year’ or ‘I’m going to miss you’ but especially for that little boy, because he kept on asking if he could keep my pen,” Diaz said.

NJ Summer Tutoring Corp program

The program was such a success its organizers are restarting it and expanding it in the fall.Provided by Katherine Bassett

Ninety paid tutors served 2,000 students and gained teaching experience this past summer through the program, which aimed to decrease potential learning loss. It was such a success, its organizers are starting it up again and expanding it in the fall, with continuing funding.

Katherine Bassett, the executive director of the NJ Tutoring Corps, organized the program with a few employees in roughly 34 days, since she was hired to run it in late May.

She said the program will increase to 42 site locations for the fall programming, which will start in early November and run through May. They also plan to expand the curriculum.

“During the school year, we want to do both math and literacy,” she said. “But we were able to see significant progress in math skills and enthusiasm in grades kindergarten through grade four.”

There weren’t enough fifth-graders to complete the assessment to determine if improvements were made, Bassett said. But she heard from site coordinators how pleased parents were with the program and how excited their kids were.

Students also received a few age-appropriate books to keep at the end of the program.

“It’s really just been a very gratifying program,” Bassett said. “To hear those kinds of comments is incredibly validating, to receive the go-ahead to move the program forward for the school year is incredibly validating, that the funders found we were so successful, that they were willing to do that.”

Cari Tarica, the operations director for the statewide Boys & Girls Clubs, echoed Bassett’s comments on the program’s success.

“It had been a really long time for a lot of our kids since they had been in person with teachers,” she said, “so I think it really made them feel safe and valued learners again. It was a wonderful program.”

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Brianna Kudisch may be reached at bkudisch@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here.

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