If virtual education is part of the foreseeable future, some students and teachers-to-be are embracing it and thriving.
In September 2020, Greenwood-based nonprofit Community Initiatives moved its Safe Haven afterschool program to a virtual format, offering tutoring to interested students and families through online classrooms with qualified tutors.
Two of these tutors admit they were a little scared of teaching children they had never met via computer screen. Now, they say they are grateful for the experience. Plus, their students are doing well in school.
“One day, before a (virtual) tutoring session ended, my student’s mom sat down and told me she really appreciated it and that he got an A on a test and moved up a whole level in math,” said tutor Skylar Brown, 21, a Lander junior elementary education major from Williston.
Thirty children, ranging from kindergarten to fifth grade, from 21 families took part virtually in the previous semester of Safe Haven. The next one starts Tuesday.
“Not all of our students participated first semester,” Teresa S. Goodman, Community Initiatives’ executive director, said. “Some decided virtual tutoring wasn’t for them.” For the upcoming semester, animated story times using Bitmoji Classroom might be explored.
Susan Fernandez, teacher education department chairwoman and teaching fellow director at Lander University, has a doctoral degree in educational leadership from Union Institute & University in Cincinnati, Ohio; her master’s and bachelor’s degrees in education from Clemson University, and her associate degree from Anderson University.
She oversees several Lander teaching fellows helping Safe Haven virtually with tutoring.
“Community Initiatives reached out to Lander’s department of education the third week of August 2020,” Fernandez said. “Those majoring in education don’t know what their futures hold as teachers. They may be virtual teachers. What a beauty this program is. ... Both CI and our students are getting a benefit.”
Fernandez said more future teachers would have applied to be Safe Haven virtual tutors, but a number voiced they were wary of virtual teaching.
“I have 65 teaching fellows, who are the top students in South Carolina who got into this program,” Fernandez said. “There are students on a waiting list for Safe Haven. I am going to do my best to get the word out to the teaching fellows and encourage them to do this community service.”
Fernandez said she also will promote it to future educators in the Call Me MISTER program that seeks to increase the pool of available male teachers from a broader more diverse background, as well as education honor society members on Lander’s campus.
“When the pandemic started, Safe Haven closed our doors,” Goodman said. “We chose to do that because the number of children we would normally have on-site would not allow us to effectively social distance. We didn’t want to take the chance of putting our staff or children at risk.”
Safe Haven has nine staff members, Goodman said.
“Right now, we have a waiting list to as we work to recruit more tutors,” Goodman said. “We have capacity for 30 to 40 additional tutors, who would serve 30 to 50 more students.”
Goodman credits Tiara Brown, a former teacher, who is Community Initiative’s youth and volunteer coordinator, with the idea of continuing to provide tutorial and homework assistance, but do it virtually instead.
“We ran into a couple of issues,” Goodman said. “One being that students and parents who have had very different schedules during pandemic still needed access to tutors. And, not all parents had all the tools they needed to get assistance.”
From there, Goodman reached out to education departments at Lander and Piedmont Technical College to gauge interest in tutoring opportunities.
Goodman said the nonprofit did not accept donations from parents to keep programs going. Instead, funding from CI’s regular, financial supporters, plus the United Way of Greenwood and Abbeville Counties and grants from Greenwood County Community Foundation and the Volunteer Generation Fund helped.
The latter, Goodman explained, is part of AmeriCorps programs and focuses investments in volunteer management practices that increase volunteer recruitment and retention.
“Greenwood County Community Foundation also provided us with some additional funding for some families who needed emergency assistance with rent, if parents were out of work, for example,” Goodman said. “We’ve also been able to help families who, are not financially struggling, but they needed someone to help their children keep up with schoolwork. In one instance, the mother is a traveling nurse and the father works for FedEx.”
Additionally, CI and Safe Haven have partnered with the Arts Center of Greenwood to provide students with at-home art kits for science, technology, engineering, arts and math activities. CI also worked with Greenwood County School District 50 to provide students meals.
Goodman said Safe Haven virtual gives her “food for thought” moving forward still amid a pandemic.
“We didn’t know what we were going to get and we didn’t know how our families were going to respond,” Goodman said. “But, going forward, it’s going to allow us to have a program that will better serve people in our community. Whether we do it virtually or in person, we now have an option to serve folks outside of our immediate area. It has broadened our horizons tremendously. ... Now, we have children from Ninety Six, the north side of Greenwood and almost every elementary school in our district.”
Tiara Brown said tutors have been available up to four days a week for an hour a day per session.
“Tutors can choose which days and hours work with their schedules for the week,” Brown said. “Parents get links to Google Classroom from their children’s tutors.”
Available to tutors and families has been Education.com for additional learning resources.
Haylen Satterfield, 19, a Lander freshman elementary education major from Spartanburg, said she delved into virtual tutoring this past summer with a different program.
“I got my toes wet with that and this one was amazing,” Satterfield said. “I was worried at the beginning, because Ian’s mom told me he was really hands-on and he ended up flourishing with online and it still felt like a real teaching experience...It gave me insight into what possibly could be in my future, the experience of teaching in a virtual classroom.”
Safe Haven student Ian Leverette, 9, said, “I like Ms. Haylen. She is really nice. She has made me feel more confident about my math because I was having trouble before.”
Skylar Brown did a couple different tutoring programs to get service hours for Lander’s teaching fellows program, including Safe Haven’s.
“Teaching online is definitely different,” Brown said. “My student for Safe Haven, Bralen Spearman, was shy at the beginning. The first couple of times we tutored, I could only see his forehead. But, we got more comfortable. Being on screen was difficult, but you could still build connections with your student.”
Brown helped her fifth-grade student with math and reading.
“He struggled with multiplication and his mom asked me to help him with that,” Tiara Brown said. “This experience has taught us to be flexible. ... Sometimes, if the internet wasn’t working during a session, I would have to go to school and use the access in the library, or tutor from my car, using my phone.”
NaToya Leverette, 38, parent of a Safe Haven student, said communication has been key.
“Every Tuesday and Thursday, my son, Ian, is ready for tutoring at 4 o’clock,” Leverette said. “I text Haylen Satterfield all the work that Ian needs to have done. She goes over it with him and he’s an A/B student. His older sister is in middle school and she just got inducted into the National Honor Society. Both of them have been with Community Initiatives about three years.”
Leverette said her son’s teacher recently asked what he was doing differently when noticeable improvements started being made in subjects where he was previously struggling.
“I told her he’s been receiving tutoring,” Leverette said. “When the pandemic hit, as a single parent, I needed to work. I wondered if I would have to quit my job to help my children with schoolwork. Then, Community Initiatives reached out.”
