Time to Think
The past week of homework assistance at VU has been calm, with a ratio of students to volunteers that allows us to get close to the one-to-one climate that we like so much. Students have been able to get their work done, read for 20 minutes, and then play some educational games.…
Spring Things
Spring is one of my favorite times of the year. The extended daylight means that students can come to VU to do their homework and still have time to go outside and play afterward–and that’s perfect. Seems that students and their parents think so too, because we have been busy!…
Warm Weather Brings Out Students
It has long been a theory at VU that warm weather means fewer students coming for homework assistance, for the obvious reasons. But that clearly doesn’t always hold true! Last night, 24 students–more than half of our roster–and 11 volunteers came to the program. It was a happy busy group doing homework and…
Volunteers Love Leap Year
Leap year is popular among those who born on February 29, but it’s also a great event because it gives volunteers one more day to work with the students at VU! Leap day was a busy one with 18 students and 8 volunteers. Not even close to our goal of one-to-one, but…
Volunteer to Have a Great Afternoon
VU has been adding more students over the past few weeks and recent attendance has been steady with about 14 students each day–and an occasional spike to more than 20! That’s amazing and we love it, but to ensure that there’s someone to help each student with his or her homework…
Report Card Roundup
All students who participate in VU agree to share their reports cards with us. They get a small prize for bringing them in–we get the gift of knowing how they are doing in school. For some, we find out that we need to dig a little deeper in their backpacks and memories…
Did Students See Their Shadows?
On Groundhog Day, the furry critter saw his shadow and went back to bed for six more weeks, but it looks like students did no such thing because they are showing up at VU in strong numbers! Last night 17 students kept 9 volunteers busy as they did their homework…
Reading Is Fundamental
Like Amazon or Netflix, VU is always acquiring new titles–for our reading cart! Last week through the joint efforts of Barbara and Bob, 25 new titles were added for the children’s enjoyment. Many of them are for beginning readers and given our voracious group of first and second graders, they will be…
Roller Coaster Ride
VU has been on quite a roller coaster ride in January. Student numbers have been up and down ever since the holiday break. On consecutive days, numbers of students attending have been 2, 18, 10, 6, 26, 9 and 19. Last week the busy day was Wednesday. This week the busy days…