Five Shout-Outs for Five Years
Dear At the Table community,
Five years ago, on September 2, 2020, At the Table held its first tutoring session ever.
Our vision of the first tutoring session was that it would be in-person, likely at a public library or a cafe with Wi-Fi in the student’s neighborhood. But at 6 months into the pandemic, our public safety still required us to stay 6 feet apart—in one of the most populated cities in the world.
Add to that the heated political debates over the mass closures of businesses and the first citywide curfew since 1943, and that summer ushered in an abrupt change to our everyday lives.
Still, it was the beginning of the Fall semester for college students. Amongst all of the uncertainties, there were also questions about how to get textbooks, how intensive was a “writing intensive” class, and were the professors going to be nice.
And those were concerns we could more clearly tackle. We helped students prep and organize themselves for classes while noting whether Zoom or Google Meet (or some secret third service) had the best online whiteboard. We built up a school supplies fund so that we could buy every student who needed one a laptop and a digital writing pad. (Virtual Tutoring 101: It’s impossible to freehand A = πr² with your mouse.) And we saw early on that our student values transcended computer screens and offices.
Since we held our first tutoring session, we have been building community and holding space for students’ real lives, academic or not.
In honor of our 5-year milestone, we’re sharing 5 of the many spontaneous and unprompted text messages of appreciation our students have sent us over the years.
Check out some of the messages we’ve received from them below.
Each of these messages was sent by a student to their tutor—or in the case of that last one, to our leadership team when the student was working with a covering tutor. They illustrate the kindness, humility, and spirit of both our students and staff.
We are so proud of the five incredible years we’ve spent working alongside our students as they turn their college dreams into reality.
