Pitt tutors help local high school

The moment Demetrius Dorsey, a sophomore at Peabody High School in East Liberty, walked into… The moment Demetrius Dorsey, a sophomore at Peabody High School in East Liberty, walked into his fifth-period class and saw a substitute teacher, he grabbed the assignment for that day, turned around and walked right back out.

“The class was going crazy and the substitute couldn’t teach,” Dorsey said.

He needed to escape to a quiet place where he could work, so Dorsey headed to the CAST – College After School Team – room for help.

CAST is a team of tutors and mentors that strive to reduce the high school retention rate – the number of students being held back a grade – and encourage students to continue on to college.

In previous years, CAST consisted of only Pitt volunteers or students taking a Pitt course for public service credit. The students visited Peabody several days a week for a short amount of time.

This year CAST added a group of full-time tutors from the national community service organization AmeriCorps.

The addition of the AmeriCorps staff has allowed CAST to increase the accessibility of its services to Peabody students and provide greater stability for the program at the school.

Robbie Ali, founder of CAST, said that the AmeriCorps team has made the program more dynamic, organized and increased communication with Peabody faculty members.

Because the AmeriCorps workers are at Peabody five days a week for the duration of the school day, the workers can build relationships with students and have a stronger personal impact.

Peabody is one of the three lowest-performing schools in Pittsburgh.

According to Katie Philp, who supervises the CAST team at Peabody, 98 percent of the student population is African American and only 11 percent of students are proficient in math and 23 percent proficient in reading.

“Many students read and write at a fifth-grade level,” Philp said.

These statistics do not discourage AmeriCorps worker Joelle Rhayem. Every day, Rhayem follows a group of about 30 students throughout their schedules, providing individual help in classes where they struggle.

Rhayem recalled what Peabody principal John Vater once told her about helping students achieve: “In order for kids to care, you need to show them you care first.”

Rhayem took the principal’s words to heart and explained how she learned first-hand that students really do respond when they are shown respect and spoken to as equals.

“Some of these kids don’t have anyone else who cares so if you gain their respect they will at least do the work for you,” she said.

The AmeriCorps workers recognize that most upperclassmen at Peabody have already fallen into academic and behavioral patterns that are hard to erase. CAST focuses its efforts on freshman and works to get them on the right track as early as possible in their high school careers.

Rhayem said that Peabody has a shockingly high retention rate of 30 percent, and if a student fails freshman year they are far more likely to drop out.

But principal Vater has set a goal of zero percent retention for the coming years.

Pitt student Justina Pope is enrolled in the public service class that travels to Peabody once a week to tutor.

“This is very different from any volunteer experience I’ve ever had,” she said. “Right now I am learning to be patient.”

In CAST’s five-year history, Philp said she believes the tutors and the program have made a positive impact on test scores and attendance rates.

With the increased organization instituted by the AmeriCorps team, Philp hopes that next year CAST will have the numbers and statistics to support his belief.