| Tutors Project Goes on
Despite Budget Cuts
By Andrew Curry
Special to the Washington
Post
May 7, 1998, District Weekly
Alva Argueta,
a sixth-grader at Harriet Tubman Elementary School, is struggling to read.
And, as she has at least twice a week for three years now, Georgetown University
junior Lauren Galpin is helping her.
"Venezuela's
varied topography creates four distinct climates," Alva reads, sounding
out the unfamiliar words. Galpin stops her.
"What does distinct
mean?"
"Stink?" Alva
asks, confused.
"Not stink,
distinct. Let's read it again and see if we can figure out what that word
means," Galpin says patiently. On this particular night, they will spend
almost an hour in Alva's apartment in Adams-Morgan working on the same
sentence. Born in El Salvador, Alva came to the United States four years
ago and entered the D.C.
public school system unable
to speak or read English.
To help her
catch up, she was referred to Georgetown's D.C. Schools Project. Begun
in 1984, the program sends more than 250 Georgetown students into the community
as volunteer tutors for immigrant elementary and middle school kids learning
English as a second language.
Galpin, a biology
major, joined the D.C. Schools Project her first year in college. Two or
three nights a week, Galpin and about 40 other tutors pile into four vans
and are driven to the homes of children in Chinatown or Adams-Morgan for
hour-long, one-on-one tutoring sessions.
"The program
is primarily about learning English, and combined with that are reading
skills, math skills -- whatever homework they're working on. They're all
immigrant children," said Sharon Morgenthaler, the program's interim director.
"Their families originally come from other countries. They may have been
born here, but they live in households where English isn't regularly spoken."
D.C. Schools
volunteers put in more than 18,000 combined hours of tutoring last year
working with District schoolchildren in four programs.
In addition
to the one-on-one evening tutoring, the project runs an after school tutoring
program at Tubman and Cooke Elementary Schools, in the Park View and Adams-Morgan
neighborhoods in Northwest Washington; in-school sessions at Bancroft Elementary
in Mount Pleasant and Ross Elementary near Dupont Circle; and a Saturday
program that brings kids to Georgetown University for tutoring and activities.
The project
began in 1984 as a response to a dramatic influx of immigrants fleeing
civil war in El Salvador. Since then, the program has expanded and diversified
along with the District's immigrant population.
Today, the
program's tutors serve the needs of a small number of the more than 9,000
Salvadoran, Vietnamese, Ethiopian, Chinese, Russian and other immigrant
children in the D.C. public school system.
"It's not only
the language that they're learning, but the whole experience of coming
to the U.S.," Morgenthaler said. "When the tutors go into homes and work
with the children, they also end up helping the families with the language,
with forms, or with another child who needs help."
The dedication
of the project's volunteer tutors and the campus community has kept the
project going despite years of budgetary uncertainty. When the program
first began, it was funded by the District's public schools. Recently,
it has relied on a shifting mix of funding from the university, outside
grants and student support to pay
for vans, a director and
a handful of paid coordinators.
Georgetown students
have given $ 14,000 to the program this year alone. The ticket proceeds
from a student cabaret earlier this spring and a formal dance held at the
New Zealand Embassy were donated to the project. One freshman tutor even
liquidated his entire CD collection one weekend, raising more than $ 1,400.
"Last year's
budget was $ 140,000. [This upcoming year] it's about $ 70,000," Morgenthaler
said. The budget cuts are forcing the project's staff to eliminate Saturday
programming and scale back their hopes to expand. The biggest expense is
the part-time staff of 10 paid coordinators led by a full-time director.
Running a very
close second is the high cost of fueling, leasing and maintaining the fleet
of vans needed to transport the program's coordinators around the District.
Consolidation with other programs on campus and the cancellation of the
Saturday program has made it possible to operate under the new budget.
For Galpin and
the other tutors, helping "our kids" learn can be a mix of frustration
and fulfillment.
"The most important
thing that needs to be given is a sense of confidence and the opportunity
to practice the language. That's often so hard to get in the schools where
they go," Galpin said. "There are so many days when I wish I could connect
a hose from my brain to hers and download. This has taught me what it is
to be a teacher." |
