For the past five years I have spent most Monday afternoons of the school year tutoring a young child through the Fort Wayne Community Schools Study Connections program. I've really enjoyed the experience, especially the last three years when I had the same boy each year, watching him grow and improve in reading and math through third, forth and fifth grades. It was all so pleasant. We would sit at a table together in the large dining hall of our church while other student tutor pairs sat at other tables around the room. Snacks were provided for the kids who were always hungry after school and we usually had time for at least one game. We had books to read and math pages to work on and it was all so comfortable. Comfortable for me I mean. I know how to work with books and papers. But this year will be different. We will be tutoring via Zoom. Today I took a class to learn how. I've been attending Zoom meetings for six months and I am pretty comfortable with that but suddenly I need to be able to work with split screens and white boards and all kinds of other new tricks I didn't know about. It all worked pretty well during the session today but I think I will need a refresher session before I actually start working with a student. That probably won't be for a while. First the people in charge need to find students who need help but also have internet and Zoom capabilities. Just thinking about the difficulties of putting together this one hour a week program makes me feel really sorry for teachers this year.
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