Learn To Be Foundation

OrgSync, the popular online community management provider for institutions of higher education across the United States, is featuring Learn To Be today on its blog. OrgSync offers a one-stop shop for student organizations to seamlessly facilitate administrative work and web publishing.

At Learn To Be's college campus chapter at the University of Texas at Austin, OrgSync is used to provide the following key functionalities:

• Web publishing, including an automatically updated list of officers
• Sharing photo albums
• Processing requests for tutor orientations
• Sharing files
• Managing event attendance and membership point system
• Mass emails and text messages
• Contact form which is also useful for taking in anonymous suggestions from the members
• Individual profiles that help members impress potential employers
• Maintaining property inventories

At the national level, Learn To Be leverages the OrgSync suite for:

• Hosting our national discussion forum for all Learn To Be volunteers everywhere
• Submitting and processing tutor applications
• Tracking candidates as they go through the tutor application process
• Signing our digital contract
• Taking in requests for supplies from our various chapters
• Maintaining address books

We appreciate the support that OrgSync has shown us since the inception of our partnership. Without OrgSync, it would have been significantly more cumbersome to replicate our campus chapter model across colleges and universities.

Learn To Be is running a fundraiser through Hoot, a free Facebook app that allows you to easily organize quality video conferences with your Facebook friends. You can help by simply adding the app by December 1st.

Many believe that it is impossible to teach a second-language English learner without being able to communicate in his or her native tongue. However, a study by Maxie Gluckman and Alison Bailey at the University of California, Los Angeles has shown otherwise. Gluckman and Bailey called on the Learn To Be chapter at the University of Texas at Austin for tutors to interact with young ELL students in California in order to see how simple conversation can improve communicative competence, a skill which includes syntactical skills as well as social knowledge that guides the use of certain utterances at the proper times. Results showed that simple, natural one-on-one interaction greatly improved communicative competence.

The study included nine elementary school students and eight especially trained Learn To Be tutors over the course of eight weeks. During the first three sessions, tutors gauged the student’s natural speaking abilities without intervention. In the latter six sessions, tutors used intervention techniques including asking more complex questions, encouraging more nuanced responses, and creating a more fluid flow of conversation. At first, most students were shy and relatively unresponsive, but after three sessions, conversation became more elaborate and natural. For example, seven-year-old Raquel went from being minimally responsive in 94% of tutor prompts in the first session to giving elaborative responses 74% of the time by session six.

This program was beneficial not only to the ELL students but also to the tutors involved. The tutors casually discussed topics such as school and sports, and over the course of the weeks, they even developed friendships with the students. Gretchen Dao, one of the tutors affiliated with this project, stated that she had the opportunity to hear quite a bit about her student’s fascination with Pokemon. And while the students chattered away excitedly about their interests, tutors could take pride in the fact that they were helping young children develop English skills that would aid them immensely in the future. All it took was is a little time, patience, and conversation.

Every Wednesday, I walk to one of the conference rooms in the University of Texas Student Services Building for my "priority hours."  There always seems to be refreshments here for us tutors, and so before I even start, I've got a tortilla in my mouth and a nice cup of iced tea. I'm always excited to be at this snack-filled bonanza of tutoring with other dedicated UT Austin students. I briefly chat with another tutor, pick a comfy chair, and it's down to business.  Together, our cohort picks up sessions as quickly as they appear.

Students from all over northeast Austin congregate during our priority service hours of 4-6 PM on Mondays and Wednesdays in the computer lab at the Gus Garcia Recreation Center (GGRC), one of Learn To Be’s site partners.  Students who benefit from this partnership come from Hart Elementary School, Elementary School, McBee Elementary School, Barrington Elementary School, Harmony Science Academy, and Dobie Middle School. The GGRC empowers students who may not have easy access to computers or the internet to receive one-on-one guidance from some of the brightest college students in Texas. With the support of program coordinator Mr. Reuben Olivo, students are now provided with headsets that facilitate synchronous communication with our tutor base.  UT Austin volunteer Kevin Ma, who has been instrumental in building this joint venture, is always personally on-site to assist the students.

Meanwhile, the Student Services Building is only a walk away for the tutors at the University of Texas at Austin.  These priority hours allow the chapter tutors to keep each other accountable and build a sense of camaraderie around our cause.  For the students, these priority hours allow for timely reinforcement of their day-to-day curriculum.

I am proud to be a part of such an innovative and constructive way to give back to the Austin community.  I can't wait for the expansion of this program to include other schools and university chapters!