MATCH-ing College Grads to Disadvantaged Kids

BOSTON, Oct. 7, 2007 — -- As the lunch bell rings at the MATCH Charter Public High School in Boston, students stream into the cafeteria -- and their tutors slip into a stairwell and head for the third floor. They are going home for lunch.

They are members of the MATCH Tutor Corps, 45 recent college graduates who live at the school and work 12-hour days tutoring small groups of students. They are paid an average of $600 per month for their year of service. But no one is there for the money.

"I was immediately taken by the idea of, 'Here's your chance to make a small difference,'" said Katherine Kline, a 2006 graduate of Eastern Connecticut State University, who found MATCH while looking for work in the non-profit sector.

Sayaka Mikoshiba came to MATCH from Brown University.

"In college, I learned about the achievement gap, and how basically atrocious the state of some of these kids' education is in the current system," Mikoshiba said. "I saw this program and thought, 'What a great way to bring change, no matter how small, from the inside out.'"

Closing the achievement gap between students at inner-city schools and those at wealthier, suburban schools is one of the chief goals at MATCH. School administrators see the tutors, who work with students in one-on-one and one-on-two groups, as a key weapon in that fight.

"Of all the adults at our school, a tutor spends the most time with each student -- a minimum of two hours per day," said Lisa Hwang, director of the MATCH Corps.

"The Corps is three times the size of our teaching staff and [each tutor] works with four or five students for a year," Hwang said. "They are in the perfect position to build a partnership with each student's family with phone calls and visits home -- and they do."

Living At Work

The idea for the MATCH Corps began with the third floor of the school. Administrators wanted to rent out the extra space, and Boston University proposed turning it into a student dormitory. MATCH decided instead to use it as a dorm of their own and, with a grant from AmeriCorps, began recruiting tutors. The first group moved into the school in 2004.

The tutors live three to a room, sleeping on the kind of twin mattresses most people give up when they leave college. Meals are cooked in a big communal kitchen equipped with two large refrigerators and several microwaves.

The living space they share is strewn with school work. Lunchtime is often spent grading papers, and the talk is almost always about school.

"We'll go out and talk about how our kids are doing," Kline said. "We'll even be like -- we need to stop talking about school for a little while. But it's what we're always thinking about."

"We all talk to each other, and [the students] know that," added Torin Peterson, a tutor who came to MATCH from Bowdoin College. "They know that there are all these connections ... we're pretty much aware of everything that's going on, so they're very much accountable."

Relationships Are Key

MATCH executive director Alan Safran believes it is the personal relationship between student and tutor -- and the accountability that comes with it -- that pushes students to work harder than they have in the past.

"[The relationships] are so elemental, but schools are not designed to build on them," Safran said. "It takes an extraordinary amount of work, a lot of personal attention, and pushing kids every day who start to have doubts about their ability to climb up the mountain. ... That's the secret."

So far, it seems to be working.

"Our kids are going to Duke or Georgetown or Dartmouth, and to Brown and Boston College," Safran said. "Many kids who don't [come here] are not going to those places, and not getting a diploma if they do go to college. So something happens here, and it's something about a community. It's something about a relationship."