The Tutor Corps Foundation: Giving the Gift of Education

In the 19 years since Tutor Corps was first founded, it has evolved significantly. What started as a 1:1 in-home tutoring company with a small group of Bay Area tutors, has grown to include a cohort of students and tutors in Los Angeles, a growing online division, an affiliated 1:1 accredited private school, Pacific Preparatory, and a nonprofit foundation. All sectors of our organization are based on the power of  sustained, 1:1 relationships and it is the strength of those connections that has allowed us to grow. We are proud to employ over 150 instructors and serve over 200 families. 

Our growth has also allowed us to expand the impact of the Tutor Corps Foundation. Founder Jesse Roselin first launched the Tutor Corps Foundation as a volunteer program in 2004 and it has steadily expanded since then. It is now a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that provides ten tutoring scholarships a year, community service grants, and teacher of the year awards. 

Each year, the Tutor Corps Foundation offers 10 scholarships for a year of free 1:1 tutoring.

Looking Ahead

As we look ahead to 2021, we are excited to continue to evolve the foundation. So, what does the foundation look like this year? While we are still committed to our same vision, we decided to shift focus to better support under-resourced students during the tumultuous period of distance learning brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.  While we will continue to fund annual community service grants and teacher of the year awards (application deadlines coming up this May!), we are pouring additional resources into connecting students with tutors. While our students usually start with their tutors in September, we awarded scholarships early this year, allowing students to start with tutors in June so that they could use this summer to catch up on any gaps from their spring of virtual learning. We’ve also just opened up a new round of off-cycle applications so that we can connect an additional five students with tutors. In the coming year, we are also committed to exclusively supporting under-resourced students in Title I schools.

One of our foundation tutors Tania, who has been working with students who received early scholarships last summer, notes the impact the scholarship has had on the two siblings she’s working with:

“When the states started to shut down in March, schools everywhere scrambled to switch over to online learning. It was clear that some systems were not adequately prepared to support quality learning. I wanted to work for the foundation because I am committed to quality instruction for all students, regardless of tools or circumstance.”

We are proud to support our students’ virtual learning.

At the foundation, we are so thrilled to pass along all the great things we’ve learned about effective online instruction to our foundation students and tutors to help ensure that they have the most efficient and successful tutoring possible. For instance, we have found that it is incredibly important for students working virtually to have a document camera so they can share their work live with their teacher and receive instantaneous, real-time feedback. We’ve also learned that, now more so than ever, practicing good time management and study skills is vital to success. As such, all of our foundation students receive school readiness packages, including a free document camera, planner, and organizational tools. 

Success Stories

We recently spoke with a few of our other foundation tutors to check in and see how things were going, and we were so pleased to hear about the gains their students were making. “I feel so grateful that I was able to facilitate my scholarship student’s learning,” one of our math tutors Ella told us. “She started the summer struggling with basic division and multiplication and, by the end of the summer, she was dividing and multiplying multi-digit numbers. She is now totally caught up and back on grade level!” One of our other foundation tutors, Jake, noted that he has “students who started out the semester completely overwhelmed” but, after just a few weeks of 1:1 tutoring, “are now excited and confident that they can handle any academic challenge.” 

We are so grateful for our foundation tutors like Jake, Ella, and Tania and are excited to see our students’ progress throughout the year. If you are interested in supporting our mission and helping us grow our impact, please consider applying to tutor with us, or donating to the foundation. The administrative staff donates their time to the foundation, so 100% of your donation goes directly to paying the tutors for their time.

And, to those who have been vital to our growth in the last two decades: thank you for helping us give the gift of education.