The previous school year was completely virtual for many of West Boca’s students due to COVID-19. The online learning format was less than ideal because it made communication between students and teachers more difficult. An in-person connection is crucial for learning because teachers can use students’ body language as an indicator of whether or not they are understanding. Moreover, raising your hand to ask a question is easy and efficient; on the other hand, the “raise hand” feature of google meets can easily go unnoticed leaving students with unanswered questions and misconceptions.

Students would normally have their cameras off and microphones muted, further isolating them and harming their learning experience. In addition to this, it was easy to pass a class without learning the material because teachers could not ensure that students weren’t asking for help from others or the internet during assessments. This resulted in many students moving onto the next level of core subjects without the proper foundation.

Math is one of the subject’s most greatly impacted by this gap in learning. Math classes build on each other, meaning they only get more difficult. The virtual learning environment allowed many students to not learn the skills they needed and still move on to the next level of math. When West Boca returned to full in-person instruction this year, many math teachers quickly realized that their students were missing many skills that they should have already learned. 

Ms.Ali, one of West Boca’s assistant principals, has come up with a solution to this math problem: West Boca will be offering after school tutoring. Students interested in volunteering should reach out to Ms.Ali. They will be compensated with community service hours, snacks, and a letter of recommendation among other potential, future perks. The subjects that students would be tutoring in are Algebra I and Geometry. The most important requirement is patience and a good pre-disposition to help students learn the concepts. 

Ms. Ali hopes “to show growth with the students that are getting tutored and to also show our tutors the positive impact they are having on other students.” Students who would like to be tutored should also reach out to Ms.Ali; being a part of this program is both need-based and teacher recommendation-based. As of right now, tutoring sessions are occurring after school. The ideal situation is having one-on-one tutoring sessions where Ms.Ali will pair a tutor with their student.