Every third Pride Time, students in the National English Honors Society participate in Page Turners.
Page Turners is a program that has been running since the Fall of 2019.
“The Page Turners program is a partnership among the ESOL department, NEHS and the Atoms Writing Center. McClain Herman was the original coordinator of the program on the NEHS side, but since then, we have had a NEHS officer be in charge of the tutors, working closely with the ESOL department to build a schedule, pair up students and find materials to use during the tutoring sessions,” society sponsor and English teacher Sasha Duran-Russel said. “Before Page Turners, we had a pen pal program in NEHS where we paired NEHS students with English language learners (ELLs) in the school to send letters to each other.”
During Page Turners sessions, NEHS students engage with the ELL students through analyzing a variety of texts that are appropriate for the ELL students.
“Our texts are selected by Allison Crolla, who is in charge of the ESOL side of the program. She finds materials that are appropriate for the level of tutees and shares them with the NEHS tutors,” Duran-Russel said. “The NEHS tutors largely come up with their own activities and discussion questions based on proposed options from our training session. We encourage the tutors to find and use what they think would work best or be the most helpful for their tutees, since they mostly work with the same students all semester.”
While analyzing a variety of texts, tutors are able to assist their tutees through any words they struggle to pronounce. In addition to the program’s goal of enhancing the comprehension and reading skills of ELL students, the program is also built to provide students with the opportunity to form connections.
“Since we’re working on building up English speaking and reading skills, it’s important to make sure everyone is comfortable with one another in order to make progress with each other and really be able to help them improve their skills,” program coordinator senior Reena Vasudevan said.“Especially since at the end of the day, we’re working on language skills and that’s dependent on interaction, and even more than that, throughout the regular school day, our tutees and tutors don’t really have the opportunity to cross paths, so this program is a really great way to expand our community and build connections with people we wouldn’t usually have the opportunity to do so with.”
The program’s goals have undergone some changes following the transition from virtual school to in-person learning. Last school year, Page Turners was held virtually which hindered tutors and tutees abilities to form connections and have efficient sessions.
“Page Turners last year was a bit of a struggle. It was difficult finding a way to get tutees to stay engaged when most didn’t turn on their cameras,” senior Adwoa Owusu said. “I couldn’t use their non-verbal cues to see how they reacted to what we were doing in the session. Regardless, it was still fun to talk to and work with tutees each week.”
Despite the obstacles the program endured in a virtual setting, tutors and students worked hard to ensure the program would transition smoothly into this new year.
“The program has been doing well this year despite the transition from virtual to in person, we were able to get back to how the program had looked pre-covid rather than how it ran last year. Even though we’ve had to make a few adjustments and changes from last year to this year,” Vasudevan said.