Five days a week, around 30 Loyola student volunteers make their way a few miles down York Road to Govans Elementary School, where fifty students from kindergarten to fifth grade wait for their tutors to arrive. As tutors enter the building, the students race across the cafeteria, greeting their tutors with large smiles.
As the program goes into its seventh year, it aims to enhance the students’ learning while also building connections and bringing joy for the Baltimore City children. Community Schools Site Specialist Jasmine Couch-Murray, says when you step into the classroom, you can immediately feel the excitement.
“The kids are extremely excited. I get to see the impact on days when the tutors would come, the kids ask every day where their tutor was, they know exactly who they were,” Couch-Murray said.
Couch-Murray said Govans Elementary School is a neighborhood charter school, a free public school that focuses on challenging curriculum, academic achievement, and emotional growth. Govans’ after-school tutoring program aims to help children struggling in classes. They work with children one to two grade levels behind, aiming not only to help them academically but also emotionally by bringing joy to their day.
According to Couch-Murray, the program also collaborates with teachers. The teachers go to Couch-Murray with a list of students falling behind in class, who are then invited to join the program. Each week, tutors keep a log of the children’s progress which is sent to the students’ instructors. The teachers also provide the tutors with notes, updates, and suggestions on what each child should work on that week to get them up to their grade levels.
“This is a program to help our students. We meet them where they are but then we push them to where they academically need to be,” said Couch-Murray.
Charlotte Case, ’27, is a political science major with a double major in writing and peace/justice studies at Loyola. She has been a tutor since the first semester of her first year and is now the service coordinator in the tutoring programs.
“I can always see the smiles on the kids’ faces, this is an extremely positive environment for them to not only have someone who is helping them in an area that they might need a little more assistance on but also to look up to as a mentor and someone to rely on,” Case said.
Not only are the kids excited for this program, but they are also extremely impacted by the emotional connections they make with their tutors over the semester. According to Couch-Murray, Govans’ partnership with Loyola has made an enormous impact on the children. She said the children who participate in the program usually misbehave in class and fall behind on schoolwork. The program has given these children an opportunity to look at schoolwork differently as they work with their tutors.
“They build relationships, which is a huge thing. One thing I do appreciate about this program is that the tutors that come are very invested in the vision and the mission. The kids and the tutors have created some really great relationships,” said Couch-Murray.
