Students still face challenges due to learning loss caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and school leaders must still make difficult decisions about how best to address students’ unfinished learning. High-dosage tutoring—a personalized learning effort consisting of small-group instruction for at least 30 minutes a day, three days a week—is one research-backed option. High-dosage tutoring is being implemented by schools across the nation, including schools that are part of the Rocketship Public Schools network—a public, elementary charter school network committed to advancing opportunities for underserved communities. However, integrating a large external workforce into existing school culture is no easy feat. School leaders at Fuerza Community Prep and Discovery Prep, two Rocketship Public Schools in San Jose, CA, have worked to bring 19 tutors into their schools to help support students’ academic outcomes. The tutors are hired and managed by Bay Area Tutoring Association (BATA). Brenda Plazola from Rocketship Public Schools sat down with MDRC to share her thoughts on developing a supportive dynamic for tutors in the classroom.

Brenda, could you please describe your role in implementing tutoring at the two Rocketship schools?

My role as tutoring coordinator is to assist all 19 BATA tutors with anything and everything they need—from lesson plans to scheduling to filling in gaps if a tutor is absent. I make sure the tutors have all the materials they need and work alongside them to make student groups for tutoring sessions. What we found worked best was to group students by ability level, so we know where to tailor tutoring lessons. So I help the tutors make groups [based] on test scores and other data pieces.

What does tutoring look like at Rocketship schools, day-to-day?

Students see tutors four days a week for 30 minutes during a built-in time in their day called Learning Lab. All students in the grade will receive tutoring during their Learning Lab time. Our amazing BATA tutors push into the Learning Lab classroom for those 30 minutes. One of our Learning Lab specialists [Rocketship staff members who specialize in personalized instruction] is also helping with any behavioral needs that may come up and is an extra support for our tutors.

It sounds like a lot of work has gone into integrating tutors into school culture. Can you talk about what steps were taken when considering how best to make tutors feel like a part of the school community?

It all comes down to getting everyone on board—from principals to teachers to our Learning Lab specialists. Schedules and expectations had to shift for this to be successful—we had to find time in our existing schedule for tutoring to happen. I believe that everyone at Rocketship, including BATA’s tutors, is aligned with the vision of supporting our students. That’s why we are here—to support our students in any way that we can. So, once that was established, we worked to integrate our tutors into our school community—to become a team and ensure they had relationships with the teachers and students. We took the time to introduce our Learning Lab specialists to the tutors and fostered an environment of continuous improvement where the specialists and the tutors would meet and discuss areas of success and challenges. Because, really, if we aren’t all on board with the program, it’s not going to work. We need to work together to really have an impact on our students’ growth.

How did this collaboration help with behavior management?

It started on the first day that we had tutors in the building—we had the tutors introduce themselves to the students that very first day, to start building that trust. But it did take some time to incorporate our school’s behavior management systems, like our team charts and incentive systems, into tutoring. Using the same systems that our teachers were using—like rewarding students with Brick Bucks [positive incentives that can be redeemed for prizes at the school store]—helped make expectations of students clear and aligned with the rest of the school. When we did this, we saw a big change in students’ behavior. They became invested in tutoring and started to really enjoy it.

Another area of integration into school culture is curricular alignment. What systems were in place, if any, to align the content of tutoring with classroom instruction?

For tutoring, we used a different curriculum than what is being taught in our core humanities instruction. One area where we would like to grow next year is to incorporate collaboration time for teachers and tutors to align their lessons. Time is so tight, and we were never able to find a time when we could all sit down and collaborate. That is one area that I would like to focus on next year. 

Did tutors receive any type of specific training or onboarding?

Yes, we do training [sessions] every Thursday during tutors’ planning sessions. Training [sessions] are focused on mastering the curriculum, modifying lesson plans for students’ individual needs, [learning] classroom management techniques, and supporting multilingual learners. Sometimes tutors would get specific training from the tutoring vendor, Bay Area Tutoring Association, based on areas that the vendor identified as areas of improvement. The tutoring vendor also had a coordinator that supported the growth of the tutors.

Additionally, I would meet with them to go through their lessons and give them feedback. The tutors did a great job at reaching out if they needed anything, and we’d try our best to support them.

A team effort is always better than just one person, so we would get together and bounce ideas off each other, collaborate on what was going well, what needed to be improved on, how we could make a lesson even more impactful for students, et cetera.

Do you have any advice for other districts that might be looking to stand up a tutoring program?

I was nervous to start the tutoring program. There are a lot of different components just to make sure that everybody’s needs are met. Sometimes it is hard to try new things in schools and we don’t think it is going to work. But just try it out! Try it! If it doesn’t work, you can always go back and fix it. Make sure that you are trying the best you can, because at the end of the day, the impact of tutoring has been incredibly exciting to see. Just seeing the investment of the tutors in students’ growth—it is clear that this goes beyond a job for them. And it shows in the impact they are having on our students.