VRHS tutors help prepare Odyessy students for CMAS

As schools across the state begin Colorado Measures of Academic Success (CMAS) testing, a group of fourth and fifth graders from Odyssey Elementary School are ready, thanks to tutors from Vista Ridge High School.

Amy Willis, Odyssey Assistant Principal, and Sandi Rael, first grade teacher, were having a regular discussion about after-school tutoring and enrichment clubs. The conversation turned as they thought about the best way to positively impact students.

VRHS senior Elliott Scott hangs out with Odyssey students on the last day of tutoring. 

 

“We were just starting to plan for CMAS. And I said, what if we started to focus on kids that just need that extra push and extra encouragement?” Willis said.“We thought about the power of having kids teaching kids, having that peer relationship with each other. We wanted to make it different, engaging, and have the kids super excited to come.”

From there, Rael ran with the idea and planned the tutoring program, including test taking skills. She is a former fourth-grade teacher, so knew what the students needed to work on. 

“I missed helping fourth graders gain confidence and testing strategies. I missed talking to them but I didn't miss them enough to go back to the classroom,” she said with a smile. “I wanted to stay as a first grade teacher but still hang out with the kids. And I wanted to tutor the kids that wanted to be in school.”

For 10 weeks VRHS students made their way over to Odyssey after school on Wednesdays to tutor. Sixteen Odyssey students were selected to participate because they were just below the proficiency scores on the last CMAS. 

“These are kids that were so close to being proficient on the test that we felt just a little bit more support and encouragement could possibly get them into the proficient work,” Willis said. “They're kind of our bubble kids that were just so close.”

Rael said, “The goal is to help kids get testing strategies and understand academic vocabulary. They are going to learn how to write three or four paragraph essays and gain confidence in what they know. We also learned tips and tricks for multiplication and division.”

VRHS sophomore Riley Taylor writes a note to encourage OES students. 

 

SCORES

The CMAS scores won’t be available until the fall semester. So they won’t know for sure how well the students will achieve on the test until then, but they are already showing improvement. 

“I had one fifth-grade teacher come to me and let me know that with the CMAS practice, two of the students that are in my group did the best out of her class on a recent assignment,” Rael said. “We're hoping that the scores are going to show that improvement.”

“I think they’ve helped me the most with my division and my multiplication,” said Tinley Lajoie, a fifth grader at Odyssey. “The Vista Ridge kids are really nice and positive. If we get something wrong they explain how we could do it differently, or how we could do the answer in a more positive statement.” 

Fifth grader Caine Pone Wall says he is ready for CMAS. “I like what they are doing and how they are teaching us. They've taught me a lot and helped me get the piece I was missing. So, I’ll probably be able to ace the test.” 

VRHS tutors eat pizza with Odyssey students on the last day of the program.

 

MENTORS 

Even without the scores, the Odyssey students have gained from this experience because members of VRHS’s student council, JROTC and national honor society answered the call to be tutors. 

“We just knew that those groups would be great role models for our students,” Willis said. 

“We looked at it more as a mentor program,” Rael said. “Some of our students need positive role models, especially male role models. And I wanted someone to give them advice on school that a teacher can't give. The tutors would give them advice if they were in trouble with the teacher, or if they weren't doing well in class.” 

“It wasn't just about the tutoring,” Willis said. “It was about the mentorship opportunity for them to learn from an older peer and to really just strengthen relationships.”

“But my biggest takeaway is the confidence and relationships that the kids made,” Rael said. “There were a lot of times students would come after school and say it was a bad day, and then they would totally change their perspective of the day after their tutors.” 

“It was a huge success,” Willis said. “They don't miss Wednesdays because they want to be here so that they can be a part of this experience with their buddy. Just the positivity, the excitement around learning has improved.”

Tinley said, “My favorite thing is the positivity they have with us. It’s important to me because it means they are being kind and respectful to the younger students.”

Caine likes hanging out with the tutors. “They are all really cool and have positive attitudes, just good vibes. Always come with a smile on their face and help us out.”

The Wednesday before spring break was the final day of the tutoring program. Though on this day, they traded pencils for pizza and lessons for conversations. Rael organized a pizza party to celebrate her students. 

Willis said, “This morning we had kids already in tears. Sad that today is the last day that they're going to be doing their tutoring with their buddy. Mrs. Rael created this opportunity for these kids, and they now have a lasting relationship with an older mentor that they can continue that with over the years. And we're hopeful that the mentorship that they've had with these high schoolers, and then the learning that they've had in these sessions is going to be able to take them farther”

Several of the VRHS tutors were there to hang out and give them some parting thoughts. They also took time to write each student an encouraging note to be read before testing. They also sat down to talk about their experiences.

VRHS tutor Cheyenne Gable writes a note to an OES student for CMAS encouragement. 

 

Q&A with three VRHS TUTORS

Why did you decide to become a tutor?

 

Ashley Craig, sophomore, JROTC

They are the future of our world. So it's nice to have our future be educated and know what they're doing, and not be confused and frustrated when they go into the real world. 

Also, I really just liked school. I just want kids to love school like I did because it makes it so much more bearable because you have to do 12 years of school. If you're younger and you start liking school, and then you get older and it's like, oh, school isn't that bad. 

Riley Taylor, sophomore, JROTC

I really wanted to inspire little kids to focus on academics at an early age, because I know for me, it's really hard. When I got to middle school and high school, I didn't understand the importance of it. And definitely I feel like starting them at a young age to like math and English was really important. 

Elliott Scott, senior, national honors society

I love babysitting and helping the little kids. I just like helping them because, what they were saying about state testing, there was nothing like this when I was a kid and took state testing. So I think it would have been just so cool when I was little for a bunch of big kids to come over. I think it makes the whole experience less overwhelming and more comforting. You practice this, you know what's going to happen and you have those test taking strategies.”

 

What has been your favorite part of tutoring?

Ashley Craig

My favorite part is finding out how bad I am at basic math. The first day of tutoring, I found out that I had forgotten what 11 times 11 was. So that's the fun part.

Jokes aside, it is really fun to see the kids and just kind of interact with them, see their personalities and just hang out with younger people because they're brutally honest. And honestly, some people need that in their life.

Riley Taylor

I think one of my favorite parts is getting to know the little kids, actually getting to know their strong suits and what they struggle with. Just hanging out a little bit is really nice, and I think it's kind of like a fresh break from high school. 

I think it's really nice to see how different the education system is, because for me, as a little kid, we never even offered tutoring or anything like that. It was always kind of just like one of those quizzes or tests that come around yearly and you're just like, oh, I don't want to take this. And you never really understood the purpose for it.  But the way Mrs. Rael is making it sound like in her classroom, it sounds very like, right here, right now. This is going to change your future. This is going to help you with all your tests in the future. They're going to learn how to do things that we're still using today. So it's really important that we're doing this.

Elliott Scott

I love their energy. Middle of the week on a Wednesday, I'm usually super drained, but these kids always have a bunch of energy and something else that was funny—that the two of them lost a tooth while doing this.

 

How does it feel to be a mentor?

Ashley Craig

The kids are so curious. They ask you about anything and everything, they have no filter. And that is honestly amazing. It's refreshing.

They won't say it or show it, maybe ever, but they love us coming down. They love talking with the kids because it makes them feel like, not like they're better than everyone else, but that they're better than everyone, it's like an ego thing.

And I know that because I was a kid. It's also nice interacting with kids because you were once that age. And where we are now is where other people were for us. I have two older brothers. When I was in fifth grade, both of my brothers were my inspiration. And for kids that maybe don't have older siblings, or maybe you just don't have siblings in general, we could be there just so that they have someone to look up to.

Kids who struggle will continue to struggle until someone who cares steps up and shows them how to not struggle. And for them, that's us. These kids were struggling with different test taking strategies, or math or English or whatever they're learning, and we come in, we make it fun, we try and help them, and we are that person who comes up and is like, hey, I did it. I've been there. Let me help you.

Riley Taylor

I think that little kids look up to other kids because they feel some sort of mutual kind of bonding between families. I think it's really nice that little kids are excited to become high schoolers, and they're interested in our lives right now. The first kid that I think I talked to, they didn't even know me, and they already were asking about how high school is for me or what things I would go back and redo. I think they were really interested in learning and growing up. 

I feel like we're making an impact in their lives and actually winning them. They feel like they should become better people because of us. They see us giving respect to teachers and to each other. And I feel like they kind of get that. 

Elliott Scott

I think it's super cool, just being those role models for the kids. I know there are a few kids in my neighborhood that were big high schoolers when I was in elementary school and just how much I looked up to them. That's still a core memory, even though I barely remember too much about them. I remember they were the cool big kids. I just think that's cool and that we're able to help them learn and grow.

 

Does it matter that you won’t know about their CMAS score? 

Ashley Craig

It's more the experience for me because I didn't have anything like this growing up. So just having the experience of the kids being okay to ask for help, it's okay to need help with stuff. I don't really care if their test scores don't show that they improved.

It's the experience that they had with other kids getting to know other kids that they might not have known before or just getting more comfortable with bigger kids because when they go to high school, they're going to be faced with seniors and they're going to be 14 against 18 year olds. It just makes it a lot easier to have those experiences at a younger age.

Riley Taylor

It's really important to me to see the kids during practice improve. It's never going to be any better if you're not doing the practice, like these kids who came in here a couple weeks ago and they weren't the best. They didn't know how to do this ten weeks ago. And to be honest, I've seen a lot of them grow and get better, and they actually seem like they care a lot about this. And they're not just taking it as a, oh, this is just the state test that we're taking every now and then.

Elliott Scott

They've definitely grown a lot, and that's been really fun to see. And with the impact we had, the teachers made it obvious how much they're looking forward to this each week. 

 

 

Story and photos By Joel Quevillon