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COVID Notice: Most of this site describes our operations under normal conditions. The 2020-2021 season is anything but.
Overview
This site holds information or links to information used by traveling tutors for the Winter Nights program. The Winter Nights Program provides a clean, safe, and warm facility at night and a daytime services center during winter for homeless families with children and for homeless seniors. The program will serve up to 30 persons at any given time. Congregations throughout central and east Contra Costa County in Califonia provide space, meals, and volunteers.
What Tutors Do
During the Winter Nights season, eight tutors 'travel' to the host congregations week after week. Two per night Monday-Thurs (when the kids mostly have homework). When the guests arrive at ~5, we meet them and work with whichever kids need help or monitoring until dinner at ~6:30. We typically eat with them, and then work with the kids some more until ~8, giving them some time to get ready for bed at 8:30 (lights out).
Kids range in age from preschool (we typically just play with those kids, sometimes read to them) to high school seniors. We're there mostly to help with homework and identify remedial needs. The host congregations sometimes provide volunteers to tutor or do homework with the kids. In that case, the traveling tutors will mostly make sure that the volunteers know what each student needs. Depending on the current guest census and other factors, sometimes there's not a whole lot to do. But part of what we do is to give the kids the message that we care about their education, which we do by just showing up consistently.
Most of us are former teachers, but that's not at all required. When we run into material that's above our pay grade, we have some specialists in math and science we can call on.
Another pretty rewarding part of this is just getting to know the kids, and families on an ongoing basis: building the kids' trust is rewarding.
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