First off, my apologies to all my readers; I have become an every-other-week summer blogger. Part of this is because the first few weeks at LIST have been pretty slow with only a handful of students attending. Yet, as the beginning of the school year approaches, I am having more and more parents sign their children up. Just yesterday, I signed two sisters up. It was a bit of an adventure because their Mom did not speak English and I speak basically no Spanish. Luckily, we were able to ask the owner of the water store that is next to LIST to translate for us. The two girls, students that have never attended LIST, will attend for the rest of the summer and continue into the school year. It will be an interesting challenge as I do not think the girls speak much English either. I have taught students in this situation, but I have always had another student there to translate when needed. Going forward, I will try to schedule our Spanish speaking volunteer to be at LIST on the days the girls are there to help. I also have the understanding that while the girls are a grade apart, they may have the same skill level, and therefore, I will work with them together in hopes of easing any fears they may have.
Overall, I have seen much growth in the students that have been attending LIST this summer. I have seen a strengthening of their reading and math skills as well as the continued joy of learning. I have also realized that next summer, when we run our summer program, we will limit them it to the month of August. This seems to be the time when students and their parents are most available for tutoring.
LIST will be open for one more week, and then we will take a week off to advertise and prepare for our second year of operation! Already, the schedule for the school year is filling up; my next task on my to-do list is to email our volunteers to find out their availability. Depending on their availability, and the availability of any new volunteers, I may also advertise at one additional local school; the school I first taught at when I moved to Inglewood. It is about a mile away from LIST with a similar population; the need is as great there as it is in the neighborhood of LIST.
I will definitely blog next week as it will be our last week of summer. The following week, since LIST will be closed to do advertising, I probably will not blog. However, once we start up on September 8, my blogs will become a weekly occurrence. On the not of scheduling, LIST now has a calendar linked to our website. There, you can see the days we will be open and our hours of operation. Also, on this calendar, you will find any special events we may have as they come along. Just go to www.listhelps.org and click on the Calendar tab on the middle left.
