What is Tutorona?
Tutorona is the brainchild of a collective group of high-school students in our community who wanted to provide accessible educational guidance to all students in our area. The ultimate goal of Tutorona is to coordinate with local schools to expand outreach to low-income communities, and survey various student populations in different schools, understanding their needs, and providing the required assistance. |
The onset of COVID-19 upended traditional in-person instruction in schools across the state and necessitated a transition to a virtual learning format. While the transition was necessary given the risks to students’ health during a pandemic, the move to online learning changed much of the learning dynamics that students (and teachers) had come to expect. Teachers had a difficult time keeping track of their students’ progress and providing individualized attention, and, at the same time, students were placed with greater responsibility to guide their own learning, given the constraints of virtual learning. Not to mention, the use of online meeting rooms made learning more impersonal, making it less likely for students to actively participate in class discussions, ask questions, or simply pay attention in a virtual classroom. These factors facilitated learning gaps and disengaged many students from their education. But the issue of learning gaps isn’t an issue restricted to the virtual learning format.
Even before the pandemic, many students in our district (and across the state) faced learning gaps while being at school in-person. While the common presumption for this is that students aren’t keeping up with their classwork or taking part in class, the reality is that the structure of school-learning doesn’t accommodate the different paces at which students learn. Teachers are limited by the amount of time they can spend towards teaching a specific unit or lesson during the school-year; as a result, students don’t have enough time to truly master the material they’re learning and can build gaps in their learning. As the school-year progresses, these gaps accumulate to a point where students lose interest in a certain subject and feel that they are incapable of learning altogether. Traditional schooling aims to facilitate the growth-mindset and foster an interest in lifelong learning, but in some cases, they end up doing the opposite; students feel that they have limited bandwidth in their learning capacity and, as a result, disengage from learning during a crucial period of their lifetime. With the current pandemic, these gaps in learning have likely widened and exacerbated learning disparities between students from different socioeconomic backgrounds.
Recognizing a gap between the needs of students and the resources being provided by some schools, we, at Tutorona, decided to create a FREE virtual tutoring service to address the needs of students by giving them access to a group of tutors who can aid them in their learning. We offer tutoring across a wide range of different subjects, ranging from courses like Algebra I to AP Biology. Tutorona is non-profit organization run by handful of high-school students in Henrico County; we've worked tirelessly over the past year to bring new tutors to our service and to create a virtual learning experience that makes learning easier and more accessible for students. Our goal is to reach out to students who need help with learning a specific subject and to provide them with the necessary guidance.
If you or anyone you know needs help, please feel free sign up for tutoring. If you're someone who's interested in tutoring and would love to join our team, you can apply as a student tutor.