Antajuan Scott

Having the opportunity to serve as a tutor for Heads Up has been a truly rewarding experience. I tutor second graders at LaSalle Elementary School, and I’ve developed a very close bond with them. There have been several instances when I’ve realized the impact my presence has on my students’ lives, and the following stories are great examples.

When I first began tutoring, it wasn’t always easy to convince my students to participate in “popcorn reading” (this is when students pick each other to read pages out of a book) during literature circle. As time progressed, the students actually began to look forward to the popcorn reading segment of the day. But there was one student, Sarah, who was still uneasy about reading in front of her classmates.

Sarah’s first language is Spanish and she told me one day that students in her class would make fun of her for stumbling over words. I decided to spend extra time helping Sarah. After a month of working steadily with Sarah, her reading was showing a lot of improvement. Then one day, something amazing happened. During literature circle, I asked who wanted to start the book off and the first hand in the air was Sarah’s. Words couldn’t describe the magnitude of joy that I felt. Although she stumbled over some words, it showed a vast improvement in her confidence and her overall reading ability.

The next account doesn’t have as much to do with academics – but instead with the bond that I have developed as a tutor to these students. One day I was running late on the metro and just missed the 3:29 p.m. bus.  I was feeling really anxious and worried that the students were concerned about my whereabouts. It was then that I noticed the attachment I was beginning to develop with the children.

I arrived at the school a little after 4 p.m. I went straight to the classroom, and the kids weren’t there. I went to the lunchroom and they were lining up to get ready to go outside after their snack. That is when one of my students, Makayla, spotted me. She and the other students ran up and hugged me and asked why I was late. I explained that I had missed my bus and they forgave me.  It was then I noticed that the children had developed a bond with me! I knew that I was impacting their lives and I hope I will continue to help them become the successes they are destined to be.

Antajuan is a junior at Howard University. He is double majoring in history and philosophy. A native of Detroit, MI, he tutors at LaSalle Elementary School. Antajuan says, “The second graders I work with are truly a joy to be around. I believe helping children learn and improve themselves academically is one of the most important things that a person can do.”

Diana Pierzchala

This summer was my first experience with Heads Up.  I had never taught before and I learned so much from my six weeks with the students. I now truly understand one of the goals of Heads Up—to partner college students with elementary school students.  My experience illustrates this symbiotic relationship, which allowed me to impact a student as much as they impacted me.

Jason, a second grader, was so eager to please and participate. Though Jason was a bright student, when it came to reading he became withdrawn, embarrassed and unmotivated. He would act up intentionally when asked to read, or ask to use the bathroom during literature circle so that he wouldn’t have to read out loud.

The other tutors and I realized that his reading was not at the level it should be and we began taking steps to improve it. We went over the basics of writing letters, identifying letters, identifying a letter’s phonetic sound and blends. Though Jason was able to master all these skills, he was unable to use these tools together to sound out a word and pronounce it correctly. He would often become so frustrated and embarrassed with his inability to read that he would shut down and be withdrawn for the rest of the day.

One day at the end of Heads Up’s summer program, I experienced a huge breakthrough with Jason. During literature circle, he began acting up in anticipation of having to read aloud, so I pulled him aside to work with him one-on-one. To get him motivated I told him that I would give him a sticker for each page that he managed to finish in that week’s literature circle book, Clifford the Big Red Dog.

When Jason got to a word he didn’t know, he looked up at me for help. I told him to identify the letters and sound out the word. Jason had struggled to do this all summer. But on that day, something in Jason clicked, and suddenly he was sounding out that first unfamiliar word…and then the next…and then the next. He earned 23 stickers, because he read the entire book! He displayed his stickers on his nametag and wore a smile for the rest of the day.

I was so happy that I was able to help at least one student this summer better develop his skills and improve his future.  I really felt like we both learned something.  He learned to read and I learned to give back to my community. That memory holds such a warm place in my heart, and is something I will never forget.

Diana Pierzchala is a senior at George Washington University. She is majoring in Psychology with a minor in criminal justice. She tutored at LaSalle Elementary School. She is from Oakland, NJ but is moving to Dallas, TX. Her favorite book is The Golden Compass.

Monika Edwards

My name is Ms. Monika. I love Heads Up, and I'm going to love Heads Up, for the rest of my life. This summer I worked at Garfield Elementary School as an AmeriCorps tutor. When I first started, I hoped to become more responsible and to take things more seriously — little did I know, my experience with Heads Up would help me to acquire many great gifts.

The first day of program was exciting and somewhat scary. Even though I had experience as a tutor, I had never led a classroom. I thought the lesson plans that my team constructed were wonderful but those fidgety kindergartners were not going to have it. My team members and I spent most of that day playing games with the students so that we could get to know them. That night, I went home tired but happy that we had finally met the kids we had been training to work with for three weeks.

After a week or so of program, all the kids broke out of their shy cocoons and became brilliant butterflies hungry for knowledge. We had many exciting days in the classroom. One of the most memorable for me was on a day when a thunderstorm caused the power to go out in the building. A group of my students ran right for me and hugged me, but they didn’t seem to be scared. While we waited for the parent partners to bring our classroom a flashlight, I asked the students holding on to me if they were all right and told them that I was so surprised at how brave they were in the dark. Their reply was that the only reason they were not scared was because I was there with them.

Hearing them tell me that with such honesty made me feel very good. In my own life, there have been many times when I’ve felt like I was alone in the dark and outside was a hideous storm like the one that day. When the lights have gone out in my life, I’ve had to find a way to make it through the darkness alone most of the time. To know that I was able to be a light bringing security to these children’s lives is a blessing to me. I was never in programs like Heads Up when I was younger. I come from a broken home and I never had someone in my life to hold onto while I was growing up.

The kids that I worked with at Heads Up taught me much more than how to take my responsibilities seriously. They taught me love, compassion, honesty and the significance of being innocent. I will never forget any of them and their unique personalities. While I know I gave a lot to my students this summer, they gave me just as much in return. Thank you, Heads Up, for the opportunity to have this experience.

Monika Edwards attends Trinity University and tutors at Garfield Elementary School. She is a Fine Arts major.

Sarah Murphy

Devon and Lisa, twins I tutored for two years, were both challenging second-graders in their own ways.  Devon suffered from an extreme lack of confidence because he was behind his grade level in reading.  He hung his head and didn’t look people in the eye when he spoke. Lisa, also not a very strong reader, wore the hardened face of a much older woman and fought too often with the other students. One day, Devon and Lisa came late to the Heads Up after-school program. One day, Devon and Lisa came late to the Heads Up after-school program.  Students were already reading in pairs.  I handed the twins their books and asked them to begin reading.

I watched — at first nervously — as the twins took their seats and opened their books. The two began helping each other sound out the longer, more difficult words in the book. I was truly moved as I watched them work with each other to read the book. Lisa’s slow but beautiful smile spread across her face as she realized that she could, with patience and effort, read fluidly.  Devon’s confidence was starting to soar as he shed his embarrassment of reading aloud. 

When literature circle was over, I asked for volunteers to summarize the story.  Lisa raised her hand cautiously and Devon’s eyes flashed in panic.  “Come on,” she said to her twin brother.  They went to the front of the classroom and gave a detailed presentation together, smiling with pride.  I saw Lisa relax, her eyes softening, and Devon looked out into his audience and spoke loudly and clearly.  During snack, I congratulated the twins on their reading and presentation.  “Yeah, we did good, didn’t we?” Devon ventured.  The twins smiled.  

Sarah joined Heads Up as an after-school tutor in 2005 and is currently serving her second year as an AmeriCorps tutor. A finance major and sociology minor at American University, Sarah is in her junior year and already has a clear vision of what she wants to accomplish in her life. Her goal is to apply for-profit business concepts to non-profit organizations to help them use their resources efficiently. She says, “What Heads Up is accomplishing is great. By using college students as tutors, Heads Up is able to inspire students like the twins I met this summer, and many others, to learn to love to read.”

Marcello DeMichele

The Best Example of a Homonym

This summer in the third grade class one of our lessons was to learn about homonyms. For those of us who do not remember all of our third grade grammar, a homonym is a word that sounds exactly like another word, but is spelled differently and has a different meaning. Many numbers are good examples of homonyms — for instance, the word “one” is a number and the word “won” is the past tense of “win.” By the end of the week’s lesson, the students had a good grasp of homonyms and were able to give many examples.

During Literature Circle that week we were reading Second Grade Friends. The main character, Jacob, is interested in beavers. Towards the end of the story, Jacob has to give a presentation about beavers. One of the students was reading the story out loud and she came across a sentence that read, “The beaver then uses his tail to add more sticks to the dam.” She covered her mouth in shock. “I just said ‘dam!’”