Educate & Enrich A Child in Houston's 3rd Ward

Since our last report, we have transitioned from the Summer Enrichment Program to the After-School Enrichment Program and attendance has dropped. However, this is not uncommon, and we usually see an increase after the first reporting period for grades. We are happy to say that many of our current students transferred over from the summer program.

Our after-school curriculum includes Life Skills, music, sports, wellness, and art. We are especially honored that the music students will be taught vocals by renowned artist Tweed Smith, the only female to be a member of the 1970’s R&B and Funk band "WAR."

Parental support continues to strengthen the program with almost 100% participation in our bi-weekly parent meetings. Our parents have shared insightful feedback and we are listening! We learned that parents are concerned that their children will face challenges during the reading portion of standardized tests because of the lengthy passages, which require at least an hour of reading time. To help the students prepare, we are instituting mandatory reading for at least 15 minutes each day, with incremental increases every two weeks. Parents are also asked to do the same thing at home.

We also learned that parents and students are facing challenges with “new math” procedures. In response, we will incorporate “new math” sessions in our free Saturday tutorials. In the upcoming weeks, we hope to provide our students with language classes in Spanish and Swahili.