Last year elementary, this year middle school. After participating in a tutoring program at Prospect Elementary School last year, seniors Audra Posick and Mia Bissonnette decided to work together to run a similar program at Long River Middle School. They enjoyed the program last year and wanted to keep giving students an easy place to get help from.

Posick and Bissonnette will run the program as their senior project, tutoring incoming sixth graders in mathematics and reading. They decided to move the middle school, since many incoming sixth graders are nervous to ask for help and have a tendency to sit through a class without fully understanding the material.

Posick recalls, “When I was was in middle school, I was way too shy to speak up or ask a teacher so I would have definitely taken advantage of something like this.”

For Posick, this program gives her an insight into education, a field she hopes to pursue a career in. By helping students, she gets first hand experience and validation in this career path. As for Bissonnette, however, the project is more about giving students a fun learning environment.

“I honestly don’t hope to gain anything. This is 100% for the kids and to provide a fun environment for them to do homework,” believes Bissonnette.

Each will also go about the project in separate ways. Bissonnette will focus on math help and Posick will be helping in Language Arts. While they differ in the topics that they teach, both Bissonnette and Posick have the same goal: giving young students a friendly and happy environment to improve in. They both hope to serve as role models and a person to confide in, outside of the school’s staff.

Ultimately they believe that success will come when, “we can be much less intimidating and offer them a quiet place to concentrate and get work done or get assistance whenever they need it,” says Posick.

The program has already begun and will run to the end of March. The end date is not definite as with success, both Posick and Bissonnette are open to extending the finish. They both believe that if students find the program extremely helpful, it will likely continue past March.