Tutoring program boosts student success, builds relationships

The little library was filled with the sounds of giggling children, encouraging adults and book pages turning.

Children, paired with adults, were reading books and building relationships as they munched on their cafeteria lunches.

The scene played out late on a Wednesday morning in the school library at Sullivant Elementary on the West Side. A few minutes earlier, several adults clad in business-casual had flowed through the school office, getting their visitors’ badges.

Some had been tutoring for several years and others for a few weeks, as part of a Youth for Christ and Mission Columbus tutoring initiative.

“A lot of these kids don’t have parents at home who can read with them,” said Brooke Koebel, a second-grade teacher at Sullivant.

The tutoring program, which began in 2004 in just one Columbus City Schools building, has expanded to 21 elementary schools in five local school districts.

The children who are tutored tend to go up a reading level or more during the year, Koebel said.

The tutoring initiative began when Tyler Flynn, executive director of Mission Columbus and co-director of the Columbus Tutoring Initiative, met with a group of local pastors who wanted to connect with their local community.

But the tutoring is not faith-based. Tutors aren’t permitted to begin conversations about religion with students, though many are connected with the program through faith communities.

It pairs second- and third-grade students with a tutor for most weeks of the year from October to April. This year, there are 300 tutors and 350 children involved. The tutors serve as mentors of sorts to the kids.

Teachers, like Koebel, choose students who might benefit most from the tutoring. Once a week, the students give up their lunch period and most of their recess to participate in the program.

“It’s special. They take it seriously, they know not everybody gets to do it,” Koebel said.

Part of what makes it special is the relationships that the children form with the tutors, which sometimes bloom just from the fact that an adult is taking the time to listen and talk with them one-on-one, Flynn said.

“Once that connection happens, that’s where the real learning begins,” Flynn said.

Megan Warman, who works at Park National Bank Downtown, has been tutoring on her lunch break for three years. This year, she’s working with Brittney Shaw, an 8-year-old who is in second grade. The two read “Baby Lamb’s First Drink” during a recent session, with Brittney sounding out the words and Warman encouraging the young girl as she read.

“What’s the last letter?” Warman asked. “Break it up ... Good. Put it together.”

Last year, Warman worked with Haweewa Abdikadir, now in the third grade. The two met again on a recent afternoon and picked up where they left off, reading “Mr. Putter and Tabby Ring the Bell.”

Most tutors don’t keep in contact with the students they work with after their tutoring period is over, but some do.

Flynn tells of a time he tutored a student entering second grade who was reading at a kindergarten level. Beyond the student’s reading difficulties, he was the victim of a chaotic household. There was gunfire in his neighborhood, his father was involved in selling drugs, and the boy witnessed his father getting shot and killed in front of their house during the time Flynn was working with him.

“These little kids, they’re often overlooked in all this craziness,” said Flynn, who went to the funeral for the boy’s father and stayed in contact with him through later years of school. Their relationship changed from Flynn tutoring the boy to him mentoring him.

That’s not part of the program, but sometimes the relationship between a tutor and student continues.

“All of our tutors come with a real compassion for kids, which the kids pick up on intuitively,” Flynn said. “That’s the magic.”