With the start of a new academic year, the Brock Learning Lab (BLL) team is gearing up to help children across Niagara improve essential literacy and math skills.

Last academic year, BLL community-based and in-school tutoring programs supported more than 4,000 elementary and secondary students. The lab is recruiting paid mentors and volunteer tutors to help meet the needs of children and youth across the region this year.

The BLL’s community-based programs offer individualized, one-on-one after-school literacy and numeracy tutoring for learners in Grades K-12.

The BLL also works with schools across Niagara to provide in-person reading and math support through literacy and math mentors who work with small groups of students during the school day.

As well as making a difference in the lives of local young people, BLL mentors and volunteer tutors gain valuable teaching experience while learning from peers, supervisors, local teachers and experts in Brock’s Faculty of Education.

Tiffany Gallagher, Professor in the Department of Educational Studies and Director of Brock Learning Lab, said the BLL’s network of support helps students develop their leadership and mentorship skills.

“We offer undergraduates opportunities to build their instructional skills and get their first ‘real’ experience screening students to address their needs through individualized programming,” Gallagher said.

BLL supervisor Isabella Favero, a sixth-year Concurrent Teacher Education student, said her experience as a BLL supervisor has challenged her to become better at providing accommodations, planning programming and creatively assessing all types of learners.

“This position has helped me to develop classroom management, time management and communication skills,” she said. “As a Brock Concurrent Education student, I appreciated the opportunity the BLL gave me to tutor an elementary school client while simultaneously learning content to develop my teaching practice and pedagogy.”

Favero has also worked with the BLL as a course-based tutor, volunteer tutor and paid mentor.

The BLL is currently accepting applications for paid in-school literacy and math mentors for the 2023-24 school year.

The lab is also accepting applications for volunteer tutors and interns (unpaid) for the Fall Term. Tutoring programs will be held both in person and online from Monday, Oct. 2 to Thursday, Dec. 7.

Application details for all roles are available on the BLL website.