Homework Help in a Time of Crisis

Our children are in crisis.

On Monday, November 2, we started our Reading with Grace and Mercy program for our students. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we have elementary, middle, and high school students, respectively, join us for a supplemental reading program. Research shows strong literacy rates combat poverty, decrease dropout rates, decrease teen pregnancy, and decrease incarceration, so we’re equipping our students. They’re eager to learn and strengthen in this area, and we’re hopeful. While this is a wonderful program that we’re excited about, it’s also not enough.

Our kids are affected greatly by COVID-19 and we’re fearful of the COVID-slide. In talking with some of our kids last week, we learned they’re failing their classes. This breaks my heart. These children are smart. They’re resourceful. But there’s only so much they can do on their own, and there’s only so much our teachers can do. This is an impossible time to teach and teach well every student. Our kids don’t always have parents with the time and resource capacity to be strong advocates for their children at home and in the school systems.

So we step in. We step in as advocates and we step in as support. We’re starting with homework help in the afternoons. As of last week, we pick kids up after school, bring them to us, give them a snack, and work with them on their homework and school work. We’re helping supplement the instruction and ensuring that no child that comes through us fails. This is too important; their future is too important; they are too important.

We’ve got top-notch instructors, plenty of snacks, and strong community partners in making this program a success. We need more volunteers to work with students as we’re here four afternoons a week with them. Sometimes we have our reading program and homework help program going on simultaneously, so the demands on our team are high. But our children matter to God and they matter to us. They simply need to know they matter to God and that they matter to us.

Showing them they matter means helping with algebra and chemistry and language arts. For some of our staff, it means re-learning algebra, chemistry, and language arts! But our kids are in crisis, so we won’t simply stand by and watch. We hope you’ll dive in with us.

God Bless,
Pastor Ken Austin