BoulderReads! Tutoring Options
Please read this carefully!
Shortly after you begin our tutor training you will be asked to decide which component of our program interests you the most. Your choices will be to tutor in our library-based program, our jail-based program, or our family literacy program. These three options require a 13-hour training and all focus on literacy skills—reading and writing. Although many of our students are non-native English speakers, these students come into the program with English communication skills that are sufficient for them to be focusing on reading and writing in English (even when they are not literate in their first language). Students are expected to attend two 1½ hour tutoring sessions each week. Tutors may opt to tutor only once a week, although twice a week is preferable.
We always try to match tutors during or immediately following the tutor training and generally 95% of our tutors are offered a student within three months. However, we often have a waiting list of students as well as a waiting list of tutors due to the number of variables involved in making the perfect match. We look not only at tutors' and students' schedules but also at preferred tutoring locations, interests and backgrounds, preference of gender/age, and even generally try to match people according to personalities. For example, one student might benefit from a no-nonsense tutor who demands that they meet at the same time every week more or less without fail, where another student might benefit from a tutor who is much more flexible and able to tolerate changing appointment times from month to month. If you are not matched immediately please don’t assume it
is because we don’t plan to match you! If you were invited to the training, it means we think you will be a good tutor and are wanting to give you a student as soon as your perfect match comes along. Please check with us if you have questions about this.
Library-based program:
This is the most flexible option because we match you to a learner whose schedule matches yours. You would meet with your learner once or (preferably) twice a week at the library or libraries of your choice, for 1½ hours. With planning time this is a 2-4 hour per week commitment. You may choose one of the three Boulder libraries (Main branch, Meadows branch, or George Reynolds branch) or the Louisville or Lafayette libraries.
Family-literacy program:
In this program each tutor works with a mother or father of a child enrolled in Boulder Valley Schools. This tutoring is conducted at University Hill Elementary School at 16th and Broadway, across from the University. Tutors meet with their students from 5 – 6:15 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. As in the jail program, we serve as a partner in the family literacy program. This means that we have to be flexible and able to support the needs not only of our learners but also of the other partners including the elementary school, the Title I office, Headstart and Colorado Preschool Project, the National Center for Family Literacy and others. Tutoring in this program is not quite as autonomous and flexible an experience as is tutoring in the library-based program, but it is a more social environment than our other tutoring situations.
Boulder County Jail:
This requires a more rigid and consistent schedule, although it works well for people who travel at particular times every year. You would work once or (preferably) twice a week for two hours and would generally be meeting at the same time that other tutors meet with their students at the jail. Most often, tutors meet with their learners Monday, Tuesday, Thursday or Friday (the tutor will choose which two days each week they would like) and they generally choose from the following shifts (with some variation, depending upon how many tutors are working at the jail currently): 8:30-10:30 a.m. or 1:30-3:30 p.m.. It is important for people who are considering tutoring
at the jail to consider carefully whether or not this is the right environment for them. Since we are partnering with the jail to serve their inmates and since we are going into their facility, it is paramount that we follow their rules. For some tutors this has been difficult in the past because the rules and procedures for safety and security seem excessive to some people. Our job at the jail is to tutor our adult learners, and if that means that we abide by rules which may not seem as critical to us as to the jail staff, that is the way it goes-- we MUST abide by those rules. The jail is an authoritarian environment; anyone who would chafe at that kind of
environment SHOULD NOT APPLY TO TUTOR AT THE JAIL! The other unique thing about tutoring at the jail is that the inmates come and go much more than the adult learners in our library-based program because they are generally at the jail only until they are sentenced. A tutor at the jail sometimes works with an inmate only once before he goes somewhere else; other times a tutor may work with an inmate for several weeks or even several months. If you choose to tutor at the jail you will be asked to attend a two-hour orientation conducted at the jail for incoming volunteers. This is in addition to the regular BoulderReads! tutor training that all new volunteer tutors attend.
Computer Coach:
Computer coaches usually work with adult learners who have just enrolled in BoulderReads! and are waiting to be matched to a literacy tutor or who simply want to increase their computer skills. The job of the computer coach is to acquaint the adult learner with the BoulderReads! computer lab and to teach the adult learner basic computer skills or to work with the students on some of the educational software programs. This is approximately a 1½ hour per week commitment for each adult learner served, and will last as long as is mutually agreeable.
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