Summer help

You can't launch a massive new program without having to iron out a few bugs, so I wasn't surprised or disappointed when I showed up to the Pheasant Ridge Neighborhood Center late last week and found I hadn't yet been matched with a kid for tutoring.

In the past few weeks, the folks at the Neighborhood Centers of Johnson County have been organizing 100-plus tutors to mentor kids and help them work on school skills over the summer. It's an ambitious project, and a good one – so I signed up straightaway, and I went to Pheasant Ridge on Thursday on the off-chance that they'd come up with an 11th hour match.

It didn't take long for the staff to find someone for me to meet with – an outgoing second grader with a toddler in tow. Even though she'd already had one meeting with a tutor that week, the girl was thrilled to go for another round. First, she had to run her sister home, though, so I sat on one of the couches and waited for her to come back.

And waited. When she finally made it back, busily trying to poke a straw into a juice pouch, she explained that she'd had to change her sister's diaper and clean her up.

It's not unusual for kids in low-income neighborhoods to have to act like little parents while grownups aren't around, that's one thing Sue Freeman made sure we understood at the tutor orientation a couple weeks ago. And in an e-mail at the end of that first week, she included this story in a list of “small success stories” from the new enterprise.

A young man (a 6th grader) is so excited to come to tutoring, but he is ‘in charge' of his 4 younger siblings all summer. So, he brought all of them to the Center and told them to ‘wait quietly' while he had ‘important tutoring.' As he heard various siblings bicker and cry, he would run in and out of the tutoring room to check on them, but he insisted on staying for the entire hour. Thank you to the patient tutor for understanding that many of our youth spend many days ‘in charge' of lots of little siblings and often have a difficult time participating in ‘alone-time' activities.

Something you wouldn't necessarily think of, depending on your own background, but we were without distraction -- plenty of time to chat as we practiced subtraction and writing the letter “k”. “You're really good at math,” I said. “Do you know that?” She knew, and her knowing made me smile.

She drew all different kinds of flowers and showed me how to draw a rosebud. I showed her my idea of a tulip.

Few of the tutors helping out this summer are professional educators, we're just folks who want to put some of our time to some good. During our training, retired teacher Nancy Porter had given us a list of 100 ways to tell a child they're doing a good job (Good going! I like that! I'm very proud of you!), but it turned out I didn't need the list. It was easy to compliment this girl, who chose to stay inside with me on a rare sunny day and count.

I'd signed up as a tutor to offer my help this summer, but I'm learning, too. I'd be willing to bet we all are, and that it's just begun.