The ability to read a chart is a skill that most Brown students take for granted.
But not Clare Frost '06.
Frost has been volunteering as a tutor at Hope High School since the beginning of the spring semester. Every week, she works with a 16-year-old student who emigrated from Liberia.
Frost said her work is a "fill-in-the-gaps" program, meaning she tries to review concepts that the student or students she works with may have never learned.
Referring to the Liberian student's early educational background, Frost said, "Somehow in the middle of a civil war he didn't get fourth grade."
According to Denise Di Mare, a representative for Volunteers in Providence Schools, Providence is a relocation destination point for Liberian immigrants. Due to civil war and political turmoil in Liberia, many incoming students have had "spotty" educations and have missed large stretches of schooling.
In response to the increasing number of Liberian students in the Providence school system, VIPS set up an after school program specifically for Liberian students, Di Mare said.
For the student Frost tutors, missing chunks of school meant not knowing how to read a population chart. Instead of viewing the year as an independent variable, he tried to add the numerals of the years, Frost said. Understanding how to read a graph is an example of a skill that many people take for granted, she said.
But not knowing such skills can be a big handicap. "Do you know how many charts we read in day-to-day life?" Frost said.
Frost is one of 43 Brown students currently volunteering in the Providence public schools through VIPS, Di Mare said. Of these students, about 35 volunteer at Hope High, she said.
Di Mare said this is a "big year" for Hope because it's the first year the school is operating three site-based programs focusing on information technology, leadership and arts. Brown students have helped by volunteering in after-school programs as well as working with individual teachers and guidance counselors, she said.
Jennifer Hanson '05 has been volunteering at Hope High for two years. Currently, she is assigned to one class, and each week the teacher removes three or four students from the class to work with Hanson in a small group, she said.
"For me it's completely a positive experience," she said. "They're so excited not only to see a new face but also to leave the classroom."
Once out of the classroom, Hanson said she can address individual students' problems. Hanson, who has always worked with math classes, said she breaks problems down to simple concepts and then builds them up again.
Hanson said she will start with a particular problem and ask the students if they understand it. If they say no, she'll move back a step and ask them if they understand a concept such as variables. Sometimes she has to review concepts as fundamental as fractions, but once students understand they generally become excited about the material, she said.
Seeing "such a drastic change in attitude is rewarding," she said.
Hanson, who wants to be a high school math teacher, said her tutoring experience has been very different from her own experiences attending private schools and wealthy public schools. At Hope she said she has frequently encountered students who do not respect the faculty and whose attitudes are apathetic.
But Hanson said her experiences at Hope have strengthened her desire to become a teacher because helping students in at-risk schools is more rewarding than volunteering at a school that does not need the help as much.
Frost, who went to a "really good public school," said she volunteers at Hope because she believes in public schools. She said she believes that society has given Brown students the opportunity to pursue a good education and that they should work to make the same opportunities available to others.
Frost said that because of Brown's emphasis on the process of learning, it can be difficult to tutor a student who is more focused on finding the answers to problems. But helping a student understand how to find the answers is a rewarding, if sometimes trying, process, she said.
"Once you start doing this, it's a no-brainer," Frost said, "You think, 'why haven't I been doing this forever?'"
