Our tutor training on September 17th and 24th brought us 21 new enthusiastic volunteer tutors. We thought it would be easy to match each of them with a student since it seemed like our waiting list was much longer than our list of new tutors. However, as it turned out many of the potential students on our list were not responding to our efforts by email, phone, and text to reach them. It was harder than we expected to arrive at 21 students to match to our volunteers. Our Student/Tutor Coordinator, Jessica, was very busy solving the complicated puzzle of who could meet when and what were their preferences. Hats off to her for working that out on top of a full-time job!
Between now and the next training we will review our list of students waiting for a tutor and remove from our list any that have seemed to be unresponsive.
The Ice Cream Social following the second day of training included a drawing for a $50 gift certificate. Bill Ruano, a new tutor, was the lucky recipient of a gift card for various restaurants. We will include similar drawings in our future get-togethers.
As an added bonus, during the Ice Cream Social tutors could browse through 70 or so books donated for giveaway. These books were graciously given to us by Holly Sprague who served for many years as the Student/Tutor Coordinator and as one of our tutor trainers. Many tutoring-related books from Holly's large collection found new homes that day.
The Hospitality Committee did a stellar job of setting up the room the day before training, serving light refreshments, organizing the ice cream social, and leaving the Fellowship Hall spotless afterward. Thank you, Bruna, Rachel S., Julie, and Renaye, and to other Board members and two of the new tutors who helped with the Friday setup.
I have been super pleased with the efficient and thoughtful way Nora Lyang has handled her responsibilities as Tutor Training Registrar. However, her ambitions are likely to take her away from Diablo Valley next year, so we advertised for her replacement. We believe we have found a good candidate to succeed Nora and hopefully we can make an announcement in the next newsletter.
Coming up we will have a Holiday get together in December and Annual Meeting in January. In all likelihood those will both be Zoom events. Also, Rachel King is facilitating three monthly Tutor Drop-Ins by Zoom for the remainder of the year. More details in the body of this newsletter.
|