As Kristin Lewis, a 15-year-old student at Sonora High School, struggled with the quadratic formula, a UCLA student mentor sat down to explain algebra, and gradually things started to make sense.
Last week, a group of UCLA students, part of the American Indian Recruitment, drove out to the Southern California Indian Center in Commerce to help students with homework.
Catering to a large variety of social and economic needs, student-led community service programs attempt to aid, support and empower the socioeconomically disadvantaged over the summer and throughout the year.
Many UCLA students volunteer to tutor and mentor, and many find that working with programs affiliated with their own heritage help them find new meaning in community service.
“Tutoring is great because it creates a network of people who always want to help people,” said Teena Coleman, a UCLA alumna and a volunteer with AIR.
AIR is a community service program that reaches out to the American Indian population of Los Angeles, hoping to strengthen the confidence, and the cultural identity of students – elementary through high school – through a combination of tutoring, peer advising and workshops. AIR tutors and mentors students three times each week.
In addition to the emphasis on academics, AIR deals with social and cultural issues.
“The root of our methodology is (that) ... for students to succeed they need to acquire a sense of self-determination,” said Jason Lewis, director of AIR,
AIR works at two American Indian outreach centers in Los Angeles, trying to instill this sense of self-determination.
An example of how academia is incorporated with cultural awareness, Jason said, is when AIR teaches a student a new method of taking notes through the life and story of Jim Thorpe, the most famous American Indian athlete.
Karen Salazar, a fourth-year political science student and co-director of another mentor program Barrio Youth Alternatives, said that “the Latina/o, Chicana/o and African American students they tutor find motivation in the fact that people that look like them are in college.”
Both AIR and BaYA feel that with an underrepresentation of minorities at major universities across America, culturally motivated programs can help students aim for higher education.
Back at the SCIC, Coleman worked with a young girl who was taking high school biology and was expected to answer questions for homework but was not given a biology book to take home. Unfortunately, such situations are common, Coleman said.
Organizations such as AIR and BaYA believe they are making an impact in the communities they work with, making up for the lack of services in schools.
“Just the increase in the size of our program shows that we are making an impact, when we first started we only had 20 students, now we have 60, and it’s summer,” Jason said.
Coleman said she once worked with a student who was failing in the beginning of the year, and by the end he was passing.
“Watching people succeed is almost like succeeding in your own way,” Coleman said.
Salazar said that within the first and second year of their program all the high school seniors they worked with graduated high school and went on to some form of higher education.
Perhaps the most compelling evidence comes from one of the young students attending tutoring with AIR.
Kristin said last week her tutor stayed with her longer than necessary to help her study for an algebra final, and she ended up receiving an A.
“It’s really impressive when the tutors are willing to help in any way that you need it,” Kristin said.