Looking For a New Volunteer Opportunity?
If being a tutor and helping a young Milwaukee child learn to read interests you, Common Ground has just the volunteer job for you. March of 2020 when the world closed down, MPS closed and little online teaching occurred. Many parents expressed their deep concerns in our listening sessions and asked Common Ground to “do something” about this social justice issue. We had partnered with MPS before and had contacts. We pushed MPS to do more to facilitate online learning and pass out Chromebooks. We heard requests over and over for one on one tutoring for kids who were being left behind.
We also learned that MPS is to receive a total of $506 million from a part of the CARES Act designated for Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Funds [ESSER Funds]. We put together a team who met with MPS officials and shared what we had heard. We received a commitment to designate $10 million from the expected funding to provide individual tutoring.
To answer this need we formed Forward Scholars LLC. We will find volunteer tutors to work one on one with identified students in grades one to three in some of the most challenged MPS schools. We will provide materials, education, and support each day for the individual tutors, basing our work on the nationally recognized program called Book Buddies. We will expect each tutor to commit to two hours per week with the same student, in two sessions of 45 minutes each with 15 minutes to chart on the session. We hope to roll this out in April of this year.
Sound interesting? To volunteer: email Jennifer O’Hear at jennifer.ohear@commongroundwi.org.
More questions? Contact Pat Ruttum at psruttum@hotmail.com.
