Tutor program in homeless shelters offers hope
It’s one case where a tutor likes to see students drop out — to go home to their families.
DAYTON (AP) — A program that provides tutors to children in homeless shelters does more than just help pupils with reading, writing and arithmetic. It also tries to give them hope and the belief that they can succeed.
The pupils are getting better grades and test scores, but some officials are worried that the troubled economy will increase the number of children needing the shelter tutoring.
The homeless population is difficult to track, but Dayton Public Schools officials say that about 3.4 percent of their pupils were homeless last year and about 615 lived in a shelter at some point, while an additional 111 stayed with other family or friends.
The Dayton tutoring program for homeless children also includes pupils from Vandalia and Kettering, two suburbs that don’t have shelters. Most know the homeless life well.
“They grow up real quick,” said Christine Pruitt, the school district’s liaison for its McKenney-Vento Homeless Education Program, which offers after-school tutoring through seven homeless shelters.
The St. Vincent de Paul Hotel — a homeless shelter serving about 220 homeless men, women and children — began its tutoring last year, but has more recently gotten a furnished schoolroom.
“We’re in the infancy of trying to make this work,” said Eric Romer, a St. Vincent de Paul board member and research associate for the pharmacology and toxicology department at Wright State’s Boonshoft School of Medicine. “The most important thing is to get these kids excited about learning.”
Up to 10 pupils from preschool to eighth grade in Dayton schools and surrounding ones attend the after-school tutoring at the St. Vincent de Paul shelter on a typical day.
Pruitt said the federal government granted Dayton schools $156,000 this year to cover the tutoring and other parts of the program, including snacks and bus tokens for pupils who don’t want to be seen getting on the school bus for a shelter.
Most children are embarrassed to be in a homeless shelter, but the tutoring helps them adjust to shelter life in addition to improving their school work, Pruitt said.
“It gives them something other than the negative to focus on,” she said.
Romer said he started visiting the shelter last year after establishing a St. Vincent de Paul chapter at Wright State.
He said chapter members originally went to the shelter about twice a month, working on arts and crafts and sports, but found that pupils were behind their age level in school work.
Romer and others, including University of Dayton alumni and a community service group called the Cookie Foundation, got together to furnish an area at the shelter with desks, chairs and computers. Romer also tutors there.
“In the beginning, it was like pulling teeth,” Romer said of trying to get pupils to participate. “Now they jump on me when I’m a minute late.”
Some pupils are in longer than others, but they all share a love of learning and longing for a home, tutors say.
Anthony Graham, the lead tutor for the St. Vincent de Paul Hotel shelter, has taught in Dayton schools for 20 years and normally wouldn’t like to see his pupils drop out. He says the shelter program is one in which he hopes pupils will drop out — when their families find a more stable situation.
“To me that’s the most satisfying, when they’re not here,” Graham said. “They’ve packed up and they’re gone.”