Laila M. enjoyed being a student at Cluster for five years. But when her tutor was unable to return this year, she switched to being a tutor instead.
Laila started at Cluster Tutoring when she was in 5th grade. She’s now a sophomore at George Westinghouse College Prep High School.
Cluster Executive Director Kara Kalnitz asked Laila to tutor before tutoring started, “since she knew my tutor wasn’t going to be back,” Laila said. She’s making the most of the opportunity with her student, 2nd grader Lawayne, or L.J., as everyone calls him. Her time and experience as a tutoring student is helping her as a tutor.
“There was a transition from being a student to being a tutor,” she said. “It’s hard because I have to keep the conversation going and find ways for him to participate. But it’s easy because I know who to talk to if I need help.”
When Laila does need help with L.J., she talks to the reading specialist and the math coach. “The math counselor made up some math games for L.J., which really helped,” she said.
“Most of the time we do spelling and math. I have him say and spell words. We work on word bank vocabulary cards.”
L.J. also likes to draw, so Laila has found a way to turn that into story writing. “He draws pictures and then makes up a story. It’s his story, so he has to write it down.”
Besides tutoring at Cluster, Laila is busy in her sophomore year at school. She’s in the Schuler Scholar Program, a private program in Illinois that helps students throughout high school by assigning coaches to work with students. Students also will get help on their college application process and essays. The Schuler Scholar Program offers scholarship money to attend colleges. Westinghouse is one of Schuler’s partnership schools.
Laila is also in the French Honors Society at school, where she’s taking her second year of French. Her French helped her with a trip to France last summer, which she took in July through AFS-USA. There were eight students in her group from all over the U.S. Laila was the youngest in the group but still keeps in touch with her fellow travelers, especially the ones from Illinois.
“It was three weeks,” Laila said. “We stayed at a hotel in Bordeaux and took trips to Paris and other places.” They saw castles and churches and learned a lot of history and about French music. Laila was especially impressed with the high-speed trains in France.
The students spoke non-stop French and had four hours of classes each day. Laila said she liked taking a cooking class in France and enjoyed trying new foods, especially the seafood.
This summer, Laila won’t return to France, but she is applying to attend a Schuler Scholar summer program at either Boston University or Green Mountain College in Vermont, which has a language academy.
Laila said she appreciates the help she’s received in tutoring. She used to struggle in math, but with the help she received from her last tutor, “I ended up having an A,” she said.
For the future, Laila is interested in two possible careers: She wants to become either a veterinarian or a lawyer. “All this will help me in my future career,” she said.