Summer, MIT Give Some Students A Leg Up
Program Matches Teens With Tutors
The Boston Channel
July, 2005
NewsCenter 5
NewsCenter 5's Janet Wu reported that the program at Boston's MATCH charter school is the only one of its kind in the country, and students say it's the perfect match.
"It's good, because it helps me [in] becoming a freshman, and I am getting prepared," student Nisha Balram said.
Students have different levels of motivation, but they all agree they won the lottery before they arrived. Nearly 500 Boston students competed to get into the MATCH School, and only 65 freshmen got the nod. The catch? They have to go to summer school.
"This is going to help me a lot, not just now but in the future. I could get into better colleges," student Christopher Morales said.
"I hate getting up early," student Errol Collins said. "The fact that I have to go to school in the summer when I wasn't bad the previous year, but it also gives you a momentum on students next year."
About half the students, not quite as eager as the incoming freshmen, are upperclassmen who flunked a class or two the previous year. That's when the MIT tutors have to get creative and patient.
"I don't think many of them really think that hard work will get them to where they need to go," tutor Melissa Chu said.
Tutors agree their job is more about motivating the high schoolers than teaching fractions and understanding passages. The director of the program has watched it happen the past four years.
"The relationships drive it. By the end of the summer, the students have such a good working relationship with their tutor that it becomes less of a drudge," MATCH Summer Academy Director Bob Hill said.
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