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Volunteer Kathy McKee tutors two students

Next month students in third grade and up will tackle Tennessee’s year-end assessment tests. For Metro Nashville the stakes are high. Half of the district’s 133 schools are labeled as struggling after failing to meet federal testing benchmarks. So a few Metro schools are trying something usually reserved for charter or private schools – Saturday classes. Cole Elementary is among them, meaning students are temporarily giving up lazy mornings in front of the TV, at least for eight weeks.

Cartoons With Conditions

It’s about 10:30, and eight-year-old Batool Al-Arbiey grabs Cheez-Its and a juice box in between classes. She makes her way to a computer where her Saturday cartoons come on the condition that she completes a reading lesson. Animated characters help act out stories. .

“It’s like we read a story,” she explains. “And it tells us questions.”

If answers are right she gets to watch a short cartoon. Batool is a Saturday school regular. So are about 200 out of Cole’s 300 third and fourth graders. Principal Chad High promised kids a field trip if they showed up for a couple hours of tutoring by volunteers and teachers. High came up with this idea in Florida. He and his staff were on a retreat for educators working with low-income students.

“So we sat under some palm trees in the seventy degree weather in January and just brainstormed ways we could get our school out of the ditch,” he remembers.

Three years of poor test scores, especially among English Language Learners, dug Cole’s ditch. So on the flight home, High scribbled down the name of every church, university, and neighbor who’d ever shown interest in Cole. He came up with a list of 600. Every week he shoots out an email asking for volunteer tutors. About 30 usually arrive.

They’re Wanting To Learn

Kathy McKee is one of them. She’s at a table in the shape of a half-moon with Batool and another student sitting on either side of her. Tutors usually work with two to three students. McKee looks up from a practice test.

“Number two. Batool?” she asks.

Volunteer Kathy McKee works through a math problem with a third grader

This morning they’re working out a math problem from a practice test- seven times blank equals 42. McKee’s children are decades out of elementary school. But she heard about
Cole’s need at church and jumped at the chance to help. As McKee waits for students to crunch numbers she doesn’t realize the answer is posted directly behind her shoulder on a colorful multiplication chart. Batool cracks a smile.

“There’s a chart up there that gives us the answers,” Batool says through a fit of giggles.
“Oh, you’re cheating,” McKee teases.

She can laugh off Batool’s keen eye because of what she’s seen week after week. She expected restless kids and got focused ones. It keeps her coming back.

“They’re wanting to learn and they’re trying and they want to do good on these tests,” says McKee. “And how can you say no to that.”

No Easy Experiment

It’s up to individual schools in Metro to attempt this experiment – to hunt down volunteers, convince teachers to come in on a day off and sway hundreds of parents to give up their Saturday mornings. After all, Principal High says school buses don’t run on weekends.

“The parents have to bring them here or walk them up here so that takes a commitment on their part too,” he says.

Only two other traditional schools in Nashville have tried adding a morning. High admits he isn’t even sure it will work. But, if Cole Elementery’s scores rise, perhaps more students will be sacrificing Saturday morning.

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