BELLAIRE • MEMORIAL • RIVER OAKS • TANGLEWOOD • WEST UNIVERSITY

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By Oliver Lin, age 15 and Arianna Doss, age 15 | August 27, 2020

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CLASS ACT Oliver Lin and Arianna Doss, sophomores at St. John’s School, started a nonprofit tutoring service for elementary- and middle-school students.

Nobody could have predicted the severity and duration of the coronavirus pandemic, nor could we have predicted the drastic effects that it had on our neighborhoods and communities. It was devastating to see how many kids were struggling to truly grasp the concepts they were learning in online school without personal interaction with teachers. We knew we needed to help.

Around this time, we came up with the idea for Community Tutoring. Both of us were extremely blessed to have access to teachers on-demand via Zoom calls or emails. However, we realized that many other kids were not quite so fortunate, and so we decided to do our part in helping out. We asked some of our friends if they would be interested in volunteering as tutors, and we created a website. The program has since expanded to over 15 tutors and more than 30 students. Volunteer tutors include students at St. John’s School in addition to other Houston-area high schools such as Carnegie Vanguard High School. Tutors offer help with languages such as Spanish, Latin and Chinese; English skills like reading and writing; math including elementary-level math, pre-algebra, algebra, geometry; test preparation help for the ISEE, ACT or SAT; and a variety of other subjects including C-Coding fundamentals, debate, history, science, music theory and guitar. Each tutor has a unique teaching style. We make sure to check in with parents regularly to guarantee that everything is working well.

CLASS ACT Oliver Lin and Arianna Doss, sophomores at St. John’s School, started a nonprofit tutoring service for elementary- and middle-school students.

We have a website with a list of straight-A tutors and their specialties. There, students can click on a link to the SignUpGenius that belongs to the tutor of their choice. They are then directed to a list of available one-hour time slots where they can choose what time they’d like. After each session, parents have the option to donate $10-20 to the Houston Food Bank through our fundraising page.

Since March 2020, we’ve tutored over 400 hours and raised $6,645! We are always looking to help more people, so if this interests you, please check us out at communitytutoring.net.

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