With its brightly painted walls adorned in crayon and construction paper, the tutoring center at Cornerstone Community Outreach (CCO) shelter looks like the typical children's after-school program. Volunteer tutors, mostly college students, sit waiting at tables, and around 3 p.m. students start to trickle in. By 3:20 p.m., the kids are absorbed in puzzles, spelling lists and math games. Yet at 4:30 p.m., when the tutoring session ends, these students won't necessarily have a traditional home to return to. The majority of them will join their families at CCO or another city shelter for the disadvantaged, displaced and underprivileged.
Recognizing the educational achievement gap and the great disadvantage that homeless children in the Chicago Public School system face, AmeriCorps volunteers Jamie Hetherington, Stephanie Chacharon and Jennifer Fabbrini created the after-school tutoring program Chicago HOPES, which stands for Heightening Opportunity and Potential for Educational Success.
"Our mission was to start after-school sustainable tutoring programs in homeless shelters that would offer homework help, academic assistance and enrichment opportunities," Hetherington, 23, said.
HOPES offers tutoring on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons from 3 to 4:30 p.m. at CCO, as well as at the Maria Shelter, located in Englewood. Hetherington, who works with the Chicago Public Schools Homeless Education Program, is exposed daily to realities of homelessness.
"Eighty percent of CPS kids are low income," Hetherington said. "And last year we had 10,500 homeless students enrolled in the Homeless Education Program. I don't think people are really aware of what a big problem it is."
These children have been dealt hands that often hinder their performances in school. According to Hetherington, their transient lifestyles often move them from school to school, sometimes more than a couple times every year. Statistics have shown that it can take anywhere from three to six months for a child to academically readjust after a transfer.
"We have kids who are 10 and struggle with reading," Hetherington said. "The older they get, the more grades they pass without the grade level knowledge they should have. It's just going to become more and more difficult for them to catch up."
Hetherington realizes the impact this kind of instability can have on the children. "Families can't live from shelter to shelter; it has horrible effects on the kids," she said. "They're not forming important relationships - they need permanency, they need structure and they're not getting that."
HOPES desires to give these children a piece, however small it may be, of that structure missing from their lives.
"I think the most important thing is just having a safe evironment for them in the after school hour," Chacharon, 22, said.
Chacharon said she understands the difficulties the parents are experiencing in their lives and that their children's education isn't always their first priority.
"The parents don't always have the time to do basic things with them, like reading every night or helping them with their homework," she said. "Especially here in the shelter, there's not a quiet, relaxed space for them where they would be able to physically sit down and do their homework every day."
Yet thanks to dedicated and kind-hearted volunteers like Loyola freshman Audra Passinault, these children are getting some of the one-on-one attention they so desperately need, even if it is for only a few hours a week.
"I like getting to know the kids," Passinault said. "You go into situations like this thinking they're going to be so much different than everyone else, but all kids seem to like the same thing. They just want to have some fun and want to learn."
Fellow Loyola freshman Laura Jansen is in her second semester volunteering with HOPES and said she sees a lot of potential in the students she tutors. However, she also finds it difficult to realize that she can't be there for the kids all the time.
"These kids don't always have someone to help, so the only tutoring and extra help they get is here, and they need a lot more attention," she said.
The HOPES program at CCO tutors between 15 to 20 students every week, and while the overall problem of homeless education is an almost impossible obstacle to conquer, the coordinators and tutors believe they are making a difference, no matter the degree.
"I don't think we're going to make any life-changing alterations, but I think it is a tiny, positive thing for them," Chacharon said. "It's definitely a start."
Fabbrini agrees: "In a classroom, there are 30 kids to a teacher. The fact that they can come here and interact one on one with someone who's in college really makes a difference."
The HOPES program, which isn't a certified 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, lacks consistent funding and faces the grim possibility of having no one to carry on its mission in the future.
"We haven't identified anyone at the shelter to take over the program when we leave - to coordinate, recruit volunteers and secure funds," Hetherington said. "The shelter staff is already so overworked, and like a lot of non-profit organizations that are under-funded and overworked, they just don't really have the capacity to keep running this program."
Yet for a few hours three days a week, these circumstances are forgotten, and adversity seems to be left at the door the minute the children enter the room. The tables are swarmed with students talking and laughing. The room eventually gets so crowded that the coordinators look at each other with exasperated expressions as Hetherington yells above the dull roar, "Can anyone take another student?"
It's clear that the children savor this time, and it's easy to see the relationships being formed between tutors and students.
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