Started from the Bottom, Now We're Here by Alyssa

Started from the Bottom, Now We're Here by Alyssa - November 2019 Scholarship Essay

In terms of education, Mississippi scrapes the bottom of the national barrel. Thus, academics were never a priority for the students at my school. In the fall of my junior year, however, one of my friends came up with an idea on how to break this stigma: instituting a peer tutoring program. This endeavor would be a year-long commitment, one that would require weekly to biweekly meetings. Achieving this lofty goal entailed advertising the event to students across our campus, finding a teacher that would let us borrow their classroom for a couple of hours in the afternoon, organizing an ample amount of capable teacher-turned students, and, of course, the actual teaching itself. As tutor and co-founder, my duty was not only to teach when the time came but also to spread the word of our mission and gather various resources, such as AP and ACT prep books. Finally, when all the preparations were complete, my role as tutor became a reality. I specialized in critiquing and editing essays as well as explaining Algebra II and Calculus concepts. This simple activity was the beginning of a schoolwide change- one that would reform the dismal atmosphere into one of academia.
My class is the dry underbrush that precedes a terrible wildfire; all it takes is one misplaced match for the entire thing to erupt into flames. That match was an upperclassmen student- one who against the odds of his heritage- achieved what had never been born of my school before- admittance into an Ivy League university. Like the wool had been lifted from our eyes, my class of students suddenly realized what opportunities lie at the tips of our fingers if we just applied ourselves. It was intoxicating, the realization that what had once been a pipedream, a possibility for only the rich and famous, was now a reality playing before our very eyes: elite education. However, that original student only surveyed the path before us; it was our duty to lay the bricks and make the road leading out of Bottom-Five-of-Educationville one readily accessible to the general populace of my high school’s students. The mortar of this road was the peer tutoring organization. If we could alter the atmosphere of Harrison Central to value knowledge, to promote academic achievement, then imagine how many more could exceed the limitations set by our birthright in Mississippi. Our sights were not just on accomplishing an individual goal; it was setting a new precedent. There is a phrase that one of our previous principals would say over the intercom every morning: “It’s a new era here at HC…” and a new era it certainly was, beginning with our peer tutoring organization.
Creating a successful peer tutoring group was just a matter of spreading the word and committing my time. First, I had to locate a teacher that would be willing to sacrifice his classroom for a few hours after school weekly. This part was easy; I had already developed a trustworthy relationship with my tenth-grade English teacher. He wouldn’t mind staying for two extra hours a week if it meant improving the quality of our school. The next task at hand was to recruit a team of dedicated students willing to become tutors alongside myself, especially whose academic talents supplemented what I was lacking. It was almost like assembling a group of academic Avengers: one to specialize in math, one to specialize in English, one to specialize in Science, and one ring to rule them all, as Sauron from Lord of the Rings would say. Lastly, I went from teacher to teacher, asking for permission to scribble on their whiteboards my contact information and the promise of help in any school subject, provided by kids, for kids. However, the most challenging part of the project was acquiring study materials and prep books. My family already had accrued years of ACT and SAT practice books from my older brothers’ time in the education system, and our school’s library offered a decent selection of textbooks to choose from. It was just a matter of making these resources readily accessible and reusable. This called for the painstaking process of photocopying each page and compiling them into neat, organized binders for easy distribution. The hours spent at the photocopier, the trees killed, the holes punched- all was worth it to see a lightbulb illuminated over a student’s head as he or she finally understood a concept.
From the creation of this peer tutoring group, I was able to give back to the community in a way that mattered. As I put additional hours into the organization, the fruits of my labor begin to blossom. Students performed better in the classroom, and they dreamed bigger, reaching for a goal that had once seemed unattainable for any student from my high school. The roof had been broken, and the floor raised; this year, more students are applying to Ivy League universities, including myself, than ever before. Hopefully, the underclassmen, in bearing witnesses to this academic revolution, will be inspired to continue this pattern in the years beyond. Already, I have overheard juniors and sophomores discussing the merits of Johns Hopkins, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Princeton. I have passed down the torch to them; it is now their duty to continue the Olympic run and protect the flame of intellectual curiosity from those who wish to extinguish it.