Education at Dr. Walter Cooper Academy, enduring the Pandemic…

The RCSD was able to re-establish in-person learning, as January classes resumed. The in-person classes continued, February - June of 2022. Nevertheless, the educational progress of our students had been hampered by the “lost time” of the two-year pandemic. Our students had been deprived of essential support during these crucial “educational years” in their lives.

Despite the recent lifting of masking requirements, the previous policy that the RCSD will NOT allow non-parent volunteers to enter the schools to tutor students, in-person, has remained in place through the end of this school year.

Believing that there must be a way to return to our tutoring work…The RES had hoped to launch a “Virtual RES Tutoring Team”, this Spring. However, we were told that this could not happen, either; the teachers had found that many of their students, having fallen behind over the past two years, were in need of more intense classroom attention. This was an overwhelming challenge for our teachers, one which made it impossible for them to create the necessary special tutoring work assignments (even if only virtual) for individual students.

Recently, Principal, Dr. Eva Thomas and Community School Site Coordinator, Michele White, have been helping us plan for the resumption of the in-person operation of the RES Tutoring Team, in the Fall of 2022.

Once RCSD’s Central Office has approved the DWCA Master Schedule Plan for the 2022-23 School Year, we will be moving ahead with assembling a menu of teacher/student tutoring needs, developing a weekly tutoring needs schedule, and inviting our RES Tutors to volunteer for these tutoring assignments.

One additional “Intervention Teacher” has been hired (total now @ 4). Working with the two “Teacher/Coaches”, they will be identifying, by Grade Level, students who need additional support in English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics.

Divided into small groups (6 – 8 students), these students will now be able to receive the attention they need, and our RES Tutors, specifically, will be asked to support this effort, as part of their new tutoring assignment(s).

With this recent, very encouraging progress, we can now begin recruiting and assembling our 2022-23 RES Tutoring Team.

Even just two hours a week of your time can make a big difference in the life of a Dr. Walter Cooper Academy Scholar…

Questions???  Reach out to RES Past President Lee Loomis and the RES Tutoring Team at…Rochester Engineering Society (585) 586-8030, via website: www.roceng.org, or via email: leeloomis46@gmail.com, (585) 738-3079 (mobile & text)

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