The problem was rooted in the foundation of our school district. I think a lot of educational reform needs to be done in our Schools, especially coming from a First-generation Low-Income background. The issue was that many people struggled to adjust to full-time virtual school in times of crisis. Many also needed guidance when it came to school work and balancing their personal lives and their school lives.
Our Roots and Shoots group wanted to approach this problem by talking to the administration. Our group wants to address this issue by developing a tutoring/virtual assistance group, in which every student will have an equal opportunity to educate themselves and prosper in their new learning environment. We plan to conduct this by creating a Tutoring channel through Microsoft Teams and contacting teachers and administrators about students that need help.
The virtual tutoring did not go as planned. After trying to push the program with administration, our school let us do this in the last two weeks of school. We had very minimal responses from teachers, administration, and students. This made the group frustrated as we were not able to complete our goals for this project and make an impact on our school. However, this opened our eyes to the possibilities next year: we have the attention of the administrators and we can start taking more action with [hopefully] faster responses.
Through this project, I learned that although people may not cooperate, there are still good things about certain situations. I learned that our group needs administrative support before doing any projects to make them much more impactful.
If we did this project again, I would make sure that I contact more than one administrator and get the project moving much faster. I would also advertise it to the students to get them interested and more involved with the Roots and Shoots Chapter at Gateway High School.
My favorite part of the project was when I got an email from the principal stating that they would let us do our project. Although it was too late and the project didn't attract many, it made me very happy to know that the administration slightly recognized our group. Aside from that, our Tutoring group had a total of 25 people including some administration, and some students that needed and received help. Every student that asked for helped and received it by our RS team members, was another favorite part of this project.
The biggest tip is to make sure that you advertise the project with students to get more traction. Aside from that, I think the other tip would be to ensure the assistance from the administration when doing this at school.
