BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — Computer out, headphones in, and a one-on-one experience with an online tutor is now part of Alan Potter’s third grade classroom’s daily routine.
Potter is a student at Magnolia Woods Elementary and enjoys reading. Now, with the help of a state’s $1 million leading recovery grant from the national nonprofit, Accelerate, he and his classmates are able to learn more.
“It’s helping me read and problem solve in and think more openly,” Potter said. “It’s helping me by learning more words, so I can understand more stories. And then once, and then once I read some of the longer books of longer words, I can progress up to reading better and stronger.”
With the launch of the new high-dosage tutoring, national education and state leaders made a visit to Magnolia Woods to observe the impact of the program.
According to Dr. Cade Brumley, Louisiana State Superintendent of Education, the state is one of the few with this initiative.
“It’s important for us to scale across the country and we’re only one of five states, I believe, that has been selected for this partnership,” Brumley said.
Victoria Smith is the teacher of Potter and said the new program has been making an impact in her classroom already and will help families who’ve wanted a tutor and haven’t been able to afford one.
“Parents work and it is expensive to hire somebody. So, I think this will help benefit them because they have those extra set of hands and they’re helping them with their literacy skills and helping them break apart all the passages and just reading in general,” Smith said.
Dr. Sito Narcisse, Superintendent of East Baton Rouge, is grateful to have this implementation launching at EBR, and says this will be big for not only statewide, but the district.
“Kids are having smaller groups of teachers in front of them to have more personalized conversation for more personalized help. We’ve had a lot of progress we’ve done specifically in the last two years. And this, we believe, this will just take it to the next level as we continue to build in our community,” Narcisse said.
Besides the East Baton Rouge Parish school system, the high dose tutoring is set to also take part in Lincoln, Natchitoches and St. John the Baptist parish school systems.
