With or without a grant from the school improvement team at Kingsley Elementary School, fourth-grade teacher Chris Short was determined to start an after-school tutoring program for at-risk pupils in his class.
“(At the beginning of the school year) I told the school improvement team that I was going to do this,” Short said. “I’m not going to worry about if I get the money or not.”
Short, his son and three Northwestern students provide homework help to Short’s pupils from 3:40 p.m. to 5 p.m, Monday through Wednesday. The grant, which he got from the school’s improvement team in January as part of next year’s budget, will reimburse him only for the time he spends tutoring — and for the potato chips he buys as snacks for the pupils.
Short worked with pupils during the fall and spring of last school year. The effort expanded this year to enlist help from NU students.
Short said he spends most of the tutoring session answering questions about the homework he assigns. He said he does not give pupils a lot of homework.
“I try to stick to the rule: 10 minutes of homework for each grade (level),” he said.
After pupils finish working, they spend the remaining time playing on computers or experimenting with educational projects.
One of the NU student aides, Weinberg sophomore Emily Stutzman, said Short also provides entertainment.
“He jokes around a lot with them,” she said, “Also, if a lot of students are having problems with one item, he’ll stop the class and go over it.”
Stutzman met Short last year while tutoring at Kingsley School through the Adopt-A-School program. She now comes in once a week to work with his class.
“I help him out by walking around the room and helping kids with their homework,” Stutzman said.
She said working with seven or eight pupils is different from working with one pupil. Working with a single pupil involves a step-by-step process that enables Stutzman to catch mistakes right away, she said. Working with a larger group, on the other hand, limits individual attention and sometimes involves backtracking before all questions are answered.
The tutoring session is primarily for at-risk kids, pupils who Short said have difficulty doing their homework. But the program also is open to Short’s other pupils, he said.
“I want students who are not in homework trouble to be models (for those who are), and I want to develop relationships with them,” Short said.
The session, however, does have its limits. Short said he wanted to restrict the program to his pupils only.
The last day of tutoring this year is May 22, but Short plans to resume the sessions at the beginning of next school year with the help of the grant.
A teacher for 24 years, Short taught special education pupil at Nichols Middle School before joining Kingsley staff in 1996 as a fourth-grade teacher.
