What's it like serving at site leads at RAV?

By Brynn Rosser and Emily Newman

Hello Neighbors,

Serving as Site Leads as Raising A Village for our virtual after-school program this year has been a new, different, creative, and fun experience! Our Driven 2 Succeed After School Homework Help program runs from 4:30-6:30 PM on Mondays- Thursdays. Each day, the site leads and Driven Student Guides meet beforehand to catch up, build community, and discuss any important announcements for the day. Then, we start our session with the students. We typically have about 12-15 students join us via Zoom each day for our Homework Help time. We begin with a question of the day to get students engaged, a short snack time as a group, and a fun educational video before we head into our breakout rooms where students receive one-on-one tutoring from our DSGs. 

As Site Leads, we get the opportunity to "pop in" to each breakout room to see how students and DSGs are doing and what kind of work they are completing together. Each day, when students finish their homework, they can then play virtual games with their DSG, which helps students and tutors bond and build relationships that reinforce the way students look forward to this daily time. Our favorite part of After School Homework Help this year has been getting to see the ways we are able to build community and relationship between students, DSGs, and site leads, even in the virtual space. It has also been gratifying to see students start to understand concepts that they had been struggling with, thanks to the help of their DSGs. Thanks to the help of his DSG, Tim, Khalil was able to be the first in his class to really understand how to tell time by reading the hour and minute hands! He also received a 96 on this math grade! Also, thanks to DSG, Ngan, Soliyana was able to conquer her entire pile of homework in time to play games for the first time this semester. It was awesome to see how proud she was! Our work helps young people become better. We are thankful every day to work at Raising A Village!