Dallas First Graders Meet Online Mentors For the First Time

With just a computer and an Internet connection, 40 tutors from six companies contributed over 275 hours of free tutoring to 47 1st and 2nd graders across three Dallas ISD schools in the Molina feeder pattern. Since December 2014, these tutors called their students once a week for 30 minutes. During these sessions, tutors and their students read stories, reviewed vocabulary, and practiced matching letters with sounds.

At Cochran, Cowart, and Soto Elementary, the 2014-15 school year ended on an exciting note: Tutors from Haynes and Boones, Intuit, UPS, Thomson Reuters, Comerica Bank, Nielsen and Dallas ISD visited the 1st and 2nd grade students they’ve been tutoring since December 2014.

During the visits, the tutors distributed books to all students and read stories with them. Casondra Wallace, a first grade teacher at Cochran, said the tutoring helped: “I have a girl who came in [reading at a] pre-k level and as of this week, she’s reading at a first grade level, which is amazing.” Other teachers observed students’ confidence in reading and excitement about class increased as students look forward to getting their calls every week.

Dallas became the 14th city this year to launch TutorMate with the help of the Commit Partnership and Dallas ISD. To learn more about this work and how you can get involved, contact Andy Canales at andy.canales@commit2dallas.org. Click here to access the KERA story.