Tutoring at the Rosedale Center for GIrls

At Fordham University, students are encouraged to put the faith and the lessons they learn in the classroom into action in the surrounding community and the world as a whole. Consequently, Fordham offers so many ways to get involved with helping others.

As someone who actively seeks community service opportunities and hopes to someday become a teacher, I was very interested when I learned about a tutoring opportunity at the Rosedale Center for Girls, a division of the South Bronx Educational Foundation.

Each Thursday last semester, a Rosedale van picked up Fordham girls, including myself, from campus and brought us directly to the Rosedale Center, a three-story house located in the Bronx. An afternoon at the Rosedale Center typically consisted of Diana, the student I was paired with, and I working one-on-one, to solve math problems, complete grammar exercises, read books, review her past tests, and prepare for her upcoming tests.

            

While academic growth is obviously a huge component of the Rosedale Center Tutoring Program, personal achievement and character development are just as important. Essentially, I served not only as Diana’s tutor but as her mentor as well. As we met each week, Diana and I developed a bond by talking about things that were happening in her life with her family, her classes, her friends, and her activities outside of school. As I tried to teach her what it meant to be a woman with strong morals and character, I found myself striving to be a better version of myself. My experience at Rosedale definitely surpassed all of my experiences at Fordham thus far, and I certainly hope to work with Diana again this semester.

I get by with a little help from my friends: Tutoring By The Boyle Society

Are you worried about the academic challenges of college life? Are you afraid that you might fall behind in classes, not do well on exams, or just have no idea what is going on in class sometimes? Don't worry, you have your fellow students to help you out.

 

As a senior in the Gabelli School of Business I have been involved with the Boyle Honors Society as a tutor for 2 years now. The Boyle Society is the Gabelli School of Business's own honor society and consists of upperclass students in good academic standing. The Boyle Society provides free tutoring for 5 days a week throughout the whole Semester by its members. The tutors can help you with homework assignments, exam preparation, or just go over your notes with you if you haven't really understood something in class. Tutoring is available for most Business core and major classes. It is not only for Freshmen, but for everybody, Freshmen to Senior. You just have to come to the Study Lounge on the second floor of Hughes Hall at any time between 9am and 7pm

from Monday to Friday and ask the available tutor for help.

So you don't have to worry about struggling with academics form time to time, it happens to the best of us. That is why the Boyle Society is there to help you get by with a little help from your friends.

Get a Head Start on Your Career as a Teacher!

Since the age of five, I have known that I wanted to become a teacher. This has stuck with me through the years, so in choosing a college, I was thrilled to learn that Fordham has a Five Year Teacher Education Track. Students who choose to join this program enroll in seminars beginning as early as spring of their freshman year, during which Dr. Diana Caballero gives them the tools they need to apply for early admission into Fordham's Graduate School of Education. If admitted, they will begin taking graduate courses during their senior year and finish these courses during a fifth year at Lincoln Center. The results: both a bachelor's degree in a particular subject area and a Master's degree in education!

Once students show interest in officially applying for the program in the spring semester of junior year, they are recommended to do field experience to fully recognize whether or not teaching is truly for them. For instance, last semester, I volunteered as a teachers' aide at a second grade classroom at PS 205, a school that was only a 7 minute walk from campus. This was one of the most rewarding experiences of my college career so far, as I was able to actively participate in various aspects of the class such as helping students perfect their mathematics skills (I am a math major, so this was very important to me) and working with a small group on editing and writing short compositions. It was clear that the students greatly enjoyed learning, and having to part with them at the end of the semester was very difficult for both the students and me.

During my experiences as a preliminary member of the 5-Year Teacher Education Track, I fully realized that my true calling really is teaching. I am very excited to hopefully begin a new field placement at the Rosedale Tutoring Center and am looking forward to continuing with the process of becoming a certified teacher.

Tutoring With Let's Get Ready SAT Prep

During my sophomore year, I decided to get involved with community service to give back to the local community I had come to call my home.

I chose to volunteer with a national organization called Let’s Get Ready. Let’s Get Ready is an SAT and college prep course for high school students all around the nation. Fordham has its own chapter to help the local Bronx kids.

I was a verbal coach and met with the same 8 students for 3 hours every Thursday for ten weeks. The first half of class, I taught my students grammar rules, how to take the SAT, and how to write a proper essay. For the second half of class, I helped my students write their college application essay.

It was a ton of work planning a 3 hour class every week for 10 weeks, but it was absolutely worth it. I spent 6 hours every week making fun lessons and activities that the kids would actually enjoy. At first, the kids hated coming to class. But within three weeks, I was able to get them to admit that they actually had fun in class with me.

By the end of the ten weeks, my class had improved tremendously. They went from being unable to write a grammatically correct sentence to being able to write a grammatically correct essay. I was so ecstatic when some of my students sent me their SAT test scores. Some of my kids improved their verbal score by 250 points. There is no better feeling than knowing you made a difference in someone’s life. I not only helped them to learn something new, but I helped them increase their chances of attending college.

Let’s Get Ready is only one of the amazing tutoring services Fordham has to offer. Other tutoring services can be found in the Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice office.