“Mom, do you have another $5? It’s so fun here! I wish I could stay longer!”
4th Grader attending LIST
Unlike the usual changes in fall, the weather cooling, leaves changing, the days getting shorter, I have been experiencing the opposite. It has been unseasonably hot here in the L.A. area, and my days have been getting longer! Yet, longer days are a good thing! Looking toward next week, we only have two open sessions available! We also had a volunteer join us one day this week, and that allowed us to service more students at a time. Thankfully, she is able to join me again next week, so we can again service more students.
A couple of the new students that have been signing up this week are students that I have taught in the past. It has been great to reconnect with them, and to see how they are doing academically. One student in particular, I taught in first grade. As a teacher, you worry about certain students you are teaching, always on the look out for new ideas to help them understand and comprehend the material. This student was one of those I worried about. She came to the after school tutoring I did in my classroom at the time, because learning to read for her was a real struggle. By the end of the year, however, she had made enough progress where she could go on to second grade, but because she struggled so much in first grade, I always worried about how she would do moving forward. Working with her this week was such a pleasure because I was able to see how well she is now doing. Reading is a snap for her! When she was in my class, she was kind of a quirky little girl, but now she is becoming a beautiful, well spoken young lady. Remembering how much I worried about her while she was in my class, and how hard she and I worked along with the small group of students that joined her after school, it was so gratifying to see her doing so well! It also reinforced my belief in the value of working with kids in small groups, or even better, working with them one-on-one.
There was another boy this week, a fourth grader, who was struggling with the concept of rounding numbers. I sat with him a bit and watched him do a few problems. He had a good technique where he would underline the number he was rounding and then circle the number that determined how he should round the number. . What he was missing, was the order of how things worked. Once I mentioned this to him, he had no trouble. Hopefully, we will see better math test scores now that he understands the concept and the technique he had been taught.
As I mentioned, our sessions are filling up and this means that we will soon have a waiting list. While I am glad to be able to work at capacity, I wish we could service more students, and this is where you may come in. If you are interested in volunteering with us, please contact me at kvellenga@listhelps.org. Any amount of time you can donate will be greatly appreciated – even one day a month would be great! The more volunteers we can get, the more students we can serve! We are open Monday-Thursday from 2:30-5:30. There is only one requirement and that is we need to do a background check on all volunteers (a requirement of our insurance). If you are interested, or have more questions please send me an email!
On another note, I will be posting a new picture of our sandwich board sign. We still have not been able to hang our marquee sign yet, but will do so in the next couple weeks. I’ll be sure and post pictures once it is up. Go to www.listhelps.org and click on the photo tab.
The last little bit of news is for all those Ralph’s shoppers. You may have switched over to their new club card, if you have, you will need to re-register it with their community rewards program so that they will donate a portion of your purchases to us. Here are the instructions in order to do this. I will also post these on our website http://www.listhelps.org/ and send out an email (sorry if you become overloaded with this info!)
IF YOU HAVE NOT REGISTERED YOUR REWARDS CARD ONLINE
NOTE: Since our website is now secured, these procedures will apply to everyone who has not entered their email address and assigned a password.
1) Log in to http://www.ralphs.com/
2) Click on Sign In/Register
3) Click on New Customer? Sign up today!
4) Enter your zip code and click on ‘find’
5) Click ‘Select’ next to the store you primarily shop at
6) Enter account information
a. Your email address
b. Your password (please note the rules next to this field)
c. Confirm your password
7) Subscribe or unsubscribe to email subscription by leaving the check marks or removing them
8) Click Confirm
9) Click on agree to Terms and Conditions
10) Click on ‘Confirm’
11) Click on Edit Community Contribution Program Information
12) Enter the card number as shown on your Ralphs rewards card
13) Click on ‘Save Changes’
14) Confirm or enter any corrections and click on ‘Save Changes’
15) Type in just a part of your organizations’ name or key in your 5 digit NPO number and click ‘Search’ (NPO #90138)
16) In the ‘Select Your Organization Section’, click on the bubble next to your organizations name
17) Click on ‘Save Changes’
18) Your organization selection will appear on the right side of this page
19) You have now completed your Online rewards card registration AND your Community Contributions registration.
20) Click on ‘Logout’ at the tope of the page
IF YOU HAVE ALREADY REGISTERED YOUR REWARDS CARD ON-LINE
(This means that you have already entered your email address and assigned yourself a password)
1) Log in to http://www.ralphs.com/
2) Click Sign In/Register
3) Enter your email address and password
4) Click on ‘sign in’
5) Click on ‘My Account’ (In the top right hand corner)
6) View all your information and edit as necessary
a. To make a change to your organization selection:
b. Click on ‘Edit Community Contribution Program Information’
c. Confirm your card number and click on ‘Save Changes’
d. Review your personal information and/or make any corrections and click on ‘Save Changes’
e. Type in part of your organizations name and click ‘Search’
f. In the ‘Select Your Organization Section’, click on the bubble next to your organizations’ name
g. Click on ‘Save Changes’
h. Review all information shown on your account
i. You will now see all of the changes your made and your account is updatedj. Click on ‘Logout’ at the top of the page
