MARINE CORPS BASE HAWAII -- Students from Kailua Intermediate School (KIS) participated in a “Counting on Math” tutoring program, Marine Corps Base Hawaii, April 12, 2018.
The current school bus schedule prevents on-base students from attending the Kailua Intermediate School’s after school study-hall. “There’s no option for the children to take advantage of the program unless their parents came and picked them up,” Brown said. “Last year, I asked the principal if we could get a study program on base since the base children couldn’t attend the one on campus.”
This session is the third one on base with its main focus being to help students with their mathematics skill but is expanding to teaching other subjects.
“Even though this program is math focused, we allow the students to work on other subjects,” said Lauren Brown, an advanced algebra one teacher at KIS. “One student was working on history and another student was working on English. We’re geared towards math and that’s where the majority of the support comes from.”
Brown said that she feels the tutoring program is impacting the children in a good way.
“They’re really excited about it,” Brown said. “We’ve had several parents say ‘Wow this is actually happening’ and ‘This is really great.’”
Marlissa, an 8th grader at the school, said she was happy to have joined the tutor program.
“The tutors are really good,” she said “I think it’s more hands on than in a classroom situation.”
Marlissa mentioned that she likes that the tutoring environment is smaller than a normal classroom environment.
“It’s good one on one help,” she said. “I can raise my hand and the tutors will be here in two and a half seconds.”
Brown said she hopes that this program will continue to thrive and have more students attending.
“I would like it to continue, even if it’s once a week,” Brown said. “It would be awesome if we were able to kick off the school year with this program, so the students have a resource.”