Women help school kids WIN
By Michael Wacht
DUNEDIN — Public school teachers and
principals are glad for any help people in the community can offer
them, especially when it involves spending one-on-one time with
children, according to Judy Perod.
“Teachers can’t do one-on-one in a classroom
of 30 people…or whatever the maximum class size is,” Perod said.
“Both parents are working and they can’t spend time with their
kids helping them do homework.”
For two years, the women at First United
Methodist Church here filled that need by giving local school children
one-on-one attention and tutoring through a ministry called WIN, which
stands for Women in Nurturing.
“We named it WIN to make it a positive
experience,” she said. “A lot of time, these kids, when they don’t
do well in school it doesn’t help their self esteem.”
Perod is the former president of her church’s
United Methodist Women (UMW) and is currently working with the St.
Petersburg District UMW. She served as WIN coordinator until family
responsibilities forced her resignation. Perod said the ministry did
not continue because she was unable to find a new coordinator.
The ministry was inspired by the UMW Mission
Study on violence, according to Perod. “We asked, ‘What can we do
to help the children in our community?’ ” she said. “At the
time, there were several women who were retired school teachers…who
thought tutoring would be a good way to reach the kids and be a
Christian example.”
Perod said they decided to focus on the children
that were already attending the church’s Jacob’s Ladder preschool
and after-school programs. She met with the principals at the three
elementary schools the children attended and asked them and the
teachers to identify the at-risk kids who needed tutoring.
“They were thrilled to have tutors for their
schools,” she said.
Because the WIN program was not on public school
property, it was exempt from some of the school’s restrictions. “If
you volunteer at the school, you can’t mention anything Christian,”
Perod said. “Since we were volunteering at the church, they never
said anything to us…and we were not inhibited from mentioning
Christianity. We knew the parents didn’t mind, because they had sent
their children to a Christian day-care program in the first place.”
The teachers and the volunteers worked closely
to customize the tutoring for each of the students, according to Perod.
Teachers sent work for the students to do that was related to each one’s
specific educational needs.
“They sent work for a half hour or an hour,
however long the student needed to work or could stand to work,”
Perod said, adding some students had learning disabilities.
The tutors sent notes back to the teachers
telling them how the session had gone and what progress the child had
made.
Each student attended two or three sessions per
week. “There was a lot of individual attention,” Perod said. “They
got the one-on-one they might not have gotten at home. The tutors…had
experience teaching children, so they provided skilled help.”
In addition to their own experience, each
volunteer also received training related specifically to tutoring from
the schools, Perod said, adding one principal had offered to do a
training class for the women.
Perod said she was most impressed by the ways in
which the WIN ministry had a positive effect on everyone involved. “It
was a benefit to the schools and a positive thing for the kids,” she
said. “…It helped the students, and it gave the women who were
tutors a feeling they were making a difference is the kids’ lives.”
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