A Different Breed of Tutor

People often say that there are no seasons in Los Angeles, but the end of summer is felt almost as deeply in L.A. as it is anywhere else -- particularly in beach communities like Venice, where the number of tourists and casual surfers begins to shrink as the slightly colder temperatures set in. For children, of course, the seasonal shift presents the same bad news for everyone: time to go back to school.

For the handful of kids enrolled in 826LA's English Language Learner summer camp, it also means putting aside their temporary day jobs as comic book designers and music critics. Fortunately, 826 will still be waiting for them during the school year, offering free drop-in tutoring for students aged 8-18. In a city where the numbers in the education system are overwhelming, 826 is the rare sanctuary where a student can find one-on-one assistance, whether with a tricky poem or with the multiplication table.

"We'll do any subject, although parents tend to come here because they know we work on writing," said Mac Barnett, the programs director for 826LA. "We really focus on one-on-one attention. That doesn't mean we always have a one-to-one ratio in drop-in, but the numbers are small, and we make sure there's an individual focus on the student's work and the student's needs. That one-on-one attention is so crucial -- and so hard to get. I think that sets us apart from a lot of tutoring centers."

The six weeks of the summer's English Language Learner program culminated in a performance by the class, who had been writing and revising monologues -- the tutors consistently stress the importance of revision -- in which each student took on his/her own character, such as a solider who eases his mind by building towers of plastic cups. But even if these flights of fancy are often replaced by the pragmatic demands of homework once the school year begins, the tutors at 826 are determined to show students that there isn't such a gulf between the two areas.

"Even cell division and fractions involve some element of comprehension, writing and story-building," said Joan Kim, director of education at 826NYC.

Another approach to the 'business' of tutoring

Tutoring has become big business -- the Los Angeles Times reported last month that the tutoring "industry" is worth $2.2 billion -- and that's particularly the case as colleges become more competitive and as schools scramble to keep up with the No Child Left Behind act. Children are given benchmark tests at an increasingly early age, even as classroom sizes have continued to expand. There are over 725,000 K-12 students in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and while efforts have been made to improve the teacher-student ratio and to support after-school programs via the Beyond the Bell program, many students are still being lost in the shuffle.

Set on the second floor of a converted police station several blocks from Venice Beach, the sparse but inviting headquarters of 826LA present a refreshing change of pace to tutoring-as-commerce. McSweeney's founder and "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" author Dave Eggers started 826 in San Francisco in 2002 (the flagship center is called 826 Valencia, after its street address), and its effects were so immediate that is has already spawned offspring in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Seattle and Ann Arbor, Mich.

As befits a center founded by a professional writer, the programs and activities at 826 unusually present creative expression as a viable vocation. At 826LA, Barnett and his colleagues have a bottomless pool of working professionals to interact with the students by giving readings and leading hands-on workshops.

"Professional writers and creative professionals talk about doing things a little differently than teachers do," said Barnett. "Teachers do a great job, but they're so busy with all their state standards that I think it's hard for them to design a curriculum that juggles all these demands. How can they read four drafts apiece for all these kids? So we've sent volunteers into schools so they can assign multidraft pieces. You need the chalkboard stuff, too, but to actually talk to a writer about writing, there's something different about that. Kids get really excited and have 10 million questions about what it's like to work as a journalist."