G.R.O.W.
Generate Real Opportunities & Wonder
The More You Know, The More You Grow!
What We Offer
G.R.O.W. is committed to helping students realize "the more you know, the more you grow" to achieve their full potential through initiatives, projects, and activities that promote literacy and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math).
The Message of the G.R.O.W. Tutoring Program
"The more you know, the more you grow!" is the focus and motto of the G.R.O.W Tutoring Program. G.R.O.W., an acronym for Generate Real Opportunities and Wonder, is a peer to peer tutoring program established to help enforce the importance of literacy into young minds. Through the process of the G.R.O.W. Tutoring Program students in grades K-5 experience that not all learning has to be done at a desk, but can be excuted and taught through hands on activities and most importantly, fun and friend ship.
Why G.R.O.W. Was Created
The G.R.O.W.ing Process
After tutoring inner city students for a year at her local church, Maria learned how important it as to have a good education. Especially when it comes to literacy. The majority of the children at the particular organization, where Maria tutored, were young and went to inner city schools, and sadly most were reading below their grade level. This was an eye opener to Maria, since she attends a private school, and encouraged her to find out more about her community's educational system. Through research Maria discovered that 47% of adults in the metro Detroit are illiterate. Meaning they do not have the ability to fill out a job application correctly, read labels, presciptions, and more. Since the illiteracy rate in adults is so high, it was having a negative impact on the children. Equiped with this new information, Maria gave it her all to try and help those who came her way.
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Fortunately, Maria was able to change many lives through the power of a book and a pencil. "Although," says Maria,"one life will forever have a place in my heart." She was one sassy second grader struggling to find her place in the world of education with the belief that she 'didn't need to read' and definitey 'not practice writing'. Of course this caused a great interference with her work. Eventually, with love and compassion(and of course fun!), the outcomes improved. Her reading advanced, and when she did her jouranling her inner creativity blossomed. We became great friends. Today if you ask her if she likes to read she will say,'I love it!'. Since meeting her first tutee, Maria was inspired to start a tutoring program to outreach to kids like her first tutee.
After a successful year of tutoring at her church (which Maria still does now), she was inspired to create a peer to peer tutoring organization of her own. Once the idea was put into place Maria organized ideas and typed a proposal to show her school principal, hoping that she could start her tutoring program at school. Maria's principal read her proposal and agreed to implement G.R.O.W. at her school. After a couple of early morning meetings before school with the principal and one of the second grade teachers, whose room I was going to use for tutoring sessions, organizing dates and discussing how G.R.O.W. was going to function. Maria assembled letters, sign up sheets, and documents, until everything was in place. Finally, after hours of preparation, the G.R.O.W. Tutoring Program was launched on October 24, 2014.