As Kristin Lewis, a 15-year-old student at Sonora High School,
struggled with the quadratic formula, a UCLA student mentor sat
down to explain algebra, and gradually things started to make
sense.
Last week, a group of UCLA students, part of the American Indian
Recruitment, drove out to the Southern California Indian Center in
Commerce to help students with homework.
Catering to a large variety of social and economic needs,
student-led community service programs attempt to aid, support and
empower the socioeconomically disadvantaged over the summer and
throughout the year.
Many UCLA students volunteer to tutor and mentor, and many find
that working with programs affiliated with their own heritage help
them find new meaning in community service.
“Tutoring is great because it creates a network of people
who always want to help people,” said Teena Coleman, a UCLA
alumna and a volunteer with AIR.
AIR is a community service program that reaches out to the
American Indian population of Los Angeles, hoping to strengthen the
confidence, and the cultural identity of students ““
elementary through high school ““ through a combination of
tutoring, peer advising and workshops. AIR tutors and mentors
students three times each week.
In addition to the emphasis on academics, AIR deals with social
and cultural issues.
“The root of our methodology is (that) … for students to
succeed they need to acquire a sense of self-determination,”
said Jason Lewis, director of AIR,
AIR works at two American Indian outreach centers in Los
Angeles, trying to instill this sense of self-determination.
An example of how academia is incorporated with cultural
awareness, Jason said, is when AIR teaches a student a new method
of taking notes through the life and story of Jim Thorpe, the most
famous American Indian athlete.
Karen Salazar, a fourth-year political science student and
co-director of another mentor program Barrio Youth Alternatives,
said that “the Latina/o, Chicana/o and African American
students they tutor find motivation in the fact that people that
look like them are in college.”
Both AIR and BaYA feel that with an underrepresentation of
minorities at major universities across America, culturally
motivated programs can help students aim for higher education.
Back at the SCIC, Coleman worked with a young girl who was
taking high school biology and was expected to answer questions for
homework but was not given a biology book to take home.
Unfortunately, such situations are common, Coleman said.
Organizations such as AIR and BaYA believe they are making an
impact in the communities they work with, making up for the lack of
services in schools.Â
“Just the increase in the size of our program shows that
we are making an impact, when we first started we only had 20
students, now we have 60, and it’s summer,” Jason
said.
Coleman said she once worked with a student who was failing in
the beginning of the year, and by the end he was passing.
“Watching people succeed is almost like succeeding in your
own way,” Coleman said.
Salazar said that within the first and second year of their
program all the high school seniors they worked with graduated high
school and went on to some form of higher education.
Perhaps the most compelling evidence comes from one of the young
students attending tutoring with AIR.Â
Kristin said last week her tutor stayed with her longer than
necessary to help her study for an algebra final, and she ended up
receiving an A.
“It’s really impressive when the tutors are willing
to help in any way that you need it,” Kristin said.