Currently our school offers tutoring to all students, given that all students at one point or another face academic turbulence. These sessions range from Language to Mathematics. But how likely is a student to ask for help?

Out of 46 students surveyed, 20% attend tutoring in school. 2% of students attend tutoring outside of school. However, 56.5% of the 46 students did not attend tutoring because they find it difficult to ask their teacher for help, and 82.1% overall said that they do not feel comfortable going to tutoring if a teacher they don’t know is tutoring. 73.9% said that they feel uncomfortable asking any teacher for help.

These statistics reveal only part of a larger problem, but also illuminated a solution. What if a student was tutored by a peer? According to Ms. Belfiore, a teacher who helps with mathematics tutoring, peer tutoring would consist of senior or junior leads perhaps having sophomores as helpers. Teachers would still be involved in tutoring, but they would only oversee the students’ work.

Would students attend peer tutoring? Teachers such as Ms. Belfiore believe that students would be more likely to attend tutoring if there was peer tutoring. On the other side, Mr. Williams, a math teacher, feels that it would be better for students to learn from teachers. “Curtis students see math teachers as the experts,” he said, “One thing we need to work on is expanding the definition of experts.” He feels that students would not trust a fellow peer as they would a teacher.

However, the same survey that revealed students were uncomfortable with tutoring from a teacher showed that 84.8% of students were okay with asking a fellow student for help, and 63% said that they would be more likely to attend tutoring if it was given by a peer.

Peer tutoring could be a solution for students too uncomfortable with asking their teacher for extra help. For those students who wouldn’t attend peer tutoring because they feel a student couldn’t teach them properly, this is tackled by the teachers still being involved in tutoring, even if it’s just to oversee the session.