First Week of ESL Tutoring

Today was my first day of fall semester tutoring through Gators for Refugee Medical Relief (GRMR)! Each week I am spending a few hours tutoring a child from the refugee populations that GRMR works with.

Normally I would go with GRMR to Jacksonville to provide in-person tutoring, but due to COVID-19, all our tutoring services are virtual, as they were this summer. I am working with the same student I worked with all summer, and tutoring him in english as a second language. He is young and not yet in school so we primarily work on the alphabet and basic reading, like sounding out words. We also work on conversational skills.

Though I miss the closer connections of in-person tutoring, safety is, of course, the priority- and there are actually some benefits I've noticed! The first benefit is that there can be a flexible schedule for tutoring, which wasn't plausible with in-person tutoring. In-person tutoring used to only be Saturday mornings since we all carpooled there and it was a 4 hour drive round trip, so it wasn't feasible to go multiple days. Having tutoring be virtual means that lessons can occur any day or time, which allows more tutors to get involved even if their Saturdays are booked and can make it more accessible for the students and their families who may have limited availability, or even may have transportation concerns. Another benefit is that we can expand our tutoring services outside of local areas, and GRMR is working to tutor refugees from overseas through our virtual tutoring services.

The need for technology is a big problem with exclusively doing virtual tutoring, but GRMR is working with other organizations and school districts to provide every family with necessary technology they may be lacking.

Overall, I'm grateful that we have the technology available to continue providing these important services to in-need and vulnerable populations even in the midst of a pandemic, and am looking forward to this semester!