MCHS student Alex Donahue gets an email from Upper Campus principal Jeff Prickett about helping to organize a Peer Tutoring Program here at our school to help the math and science departments with the low grades many students are struggling with.

Peer Tutoring is an opportunity for students to catch up in classes and get ahead with tutoring lessons. The math and science departments are the main classes that students are falling behind in so this program aims to offer tutoring on Wednesdays because of the early release, and possibly during AIM times.

Upper Campus’s Youth and Law teacher John Lunkenheimer said, “Students who filled out the google form sent to them about tutoring may be contacted to help out with the program. Leadership in Action students will be in charge of organizing it with the help of administration.”

There are many benefits for the students who tutor their peers, if they sign up from the google form.

Some benefits for me,” Donahue said, “are that I get earned honors credit for leadership and action as well as community service hours.”

By learning from their peers, it can benefit students more because they are getting another perspective of the ways others learn and study for a subject.

“Some benefits for students,” said Lunkenheimer, “is that they get a different learning experience than in a traditional classroom, as well as maybe learning a new way to study for quizzes and tests.”

Across all of Illinois, many schools have had similar ideas of peers tutoring others and it was very successful.

The Illinois State Board of Education explained that “an analysis of assessment data from participating students across 133 schools in 58 districts found that from fall to spring nearly 90 percent of tutored students met or exceeded expected growth in math and 80 percent in reading.”

Teachers at Upper Campus meet up once a month to discuss ways to improve student learning. The idea of peer tutoring was brought up many months ago.

“This program came from the tier I intervention team of teachers and staff members that meet every month at the Upper Campus,” said Lunkenheimer. “When brainstorming for effective tier I strategies, teachers brought up the idea of the program after reflecting on what has worked in the past.”

MCHS invited students to help one another improve their grades and social skills.

Having the option to succeed is something I believe everyone should have the opportunity to do,” Donahue said, “and with this program it makes it easier for someone to do so that is why I felt obligated to help out.”