Dear Volunteers,

With only 3months to go before the end of the school year we want to inform you of some of the up and coming events in the Pathways Program.  We also wanted to let you know that we have heard some of your concerns and are making some changes to tutoring with immediate effect.  There are also some important dates for your diary!

Course Information: The courses students are taking should now appear on their name tags.  We are doing this to help volunteers know what subjects students may need tutoring in.  It will also give you an opportunity to try and engage with the students about their academic studies and ‘check-in’ with them on how their studies are going.  If you don’t see their subjects on the name tags please prompt the students to put them on.

Tutoring Spaces: We will be rearranging the tutoring spaces to have subject specific study tables.  This will include designated tables for the core subjects and a couple of tables which are non specific. Volunteers are asked to sit at the tables where the subjects they are most comfortable tutoring in are allocated, but please be prepared to be flexible if student demands/needs are concentrated in specific areas on any one night.

Tutoring Focus: In the months of April and May our theme for tutoring is ‘binder organisation.’  Please encourage the youth you are working with to organise their files and to start thinking about organising their notes for exam revision. Shafin will be contacting volunteers with other learning objectives leading up to exams that we want students and volunteers to be thinking about.  He will send updates via email.

No homework?  If a student comes to tutoring and does not have homework with them, please speak to Shafin or Daisy and ask them for additional worksheets or work for them to do.

Your feedback is always welcome; please feel free to approach any of our staff at anytime in order to give them your comments or concerns.  Jenny Morrissey our researcher is particularly interested in hearing what you have to say, she can be contacted via email jmorrissey@newheightshealth.org.  Jenny will also be arranging more formal volunteer feedback opportunities in the next two months including, a survey and focus group sessions.  Details to follow soon!

• Volunteer Appreciation Event – BBQ and picnic, June 20th.  Details to be announced nearer the time but mark the date in your calendars now!
• School Exam Periods – these vary between June 16^th and June 26^th depending on school
• No tutoring
  • There will be no tutoring on Monday March 13^th schools are closed
  • No tutoring May 18^th for Victoria Day
• Last day of tutoring Wednesday June 24th

Tutoring: For those students who are going to be taking summer school classes we are hoping to run small tutoring sessions once or twice a week.  We will be looking for volunteers to help us with this.  Please contact Shafin if you are interested in signing up to help and let him know your availability after June 24th.  sdevji@newheightshealth.org

Student end of year events: We will be organising end of year events for all our students on June 25^th and June 26^th and will be looking for volunteers to help us run the events. These events will take place during the day because the schools are closed for PD days. Please contact Jillian, jsenyi@newheightshealth.org, and let her know your availability at any time on either of those days!

THANK YOU!

We want to take this opportunity to thank you for your wonderful dedication to our program, and let you know how important your role is to our success.

Best wishes

The Pathways Team, New Heights Community Health Centre