Tutors Making a Difference

Walking with youth through high school requires a village of support. Youth receive support at home from their families. Students receive education and support from their school, teachers, and staff. Banyan Community provides a focused space to complete homework, resources to be successful with tutors, and another layer of encouragement and caring around every youth.

Banyan offers two programs for youth in the South Minneapolis service area:

• ASPIRE: Students on scholarship and enrolled at DeLaSalle High School receive homework help from tutors, career exploration opportunities from guest presenters, and post-secondary planning assistance from staff.
• ELEVATE: High school youth enrolled in any high school can access support from staff through homework help, career exploration opportunities, and post-secondary planning advice.

Tutoring is a vital and impactful element of Banyan Community’s high school programs.

In May, Banyan alumni Jazmine Panora will share her story at the Corporate Gathering. There were many people along the way who were important to her, but one in particular was a tutor. This tutor who helped encourage her path toward engineering was Bob Orange, a Systems Engineer. Bob shared wisdom, exploration, and curiosity with Banyan youth as a tutor for 10 years!

“Without his conversations I never would have known what an engineer does, let alone feel like I could do that for my career. I could be an engineer.” – Jazmine

Reminiscing on his tenure as a tutor Bob said he was so excited to see the brilliant potential in the youth and whenever a light bulb moment of understanding happened it was thrilling. He was struck that the “rate of change” in growth and knowledge by the youth in four years was so quick and dramatic.

Bob led numerous hands-on activities at Banyan like building earthquake-proof structures, but he also humbly explored other subject areas of homework with youth. With a smile, Bob recalls working through a James Joyce novel with a youth and truly enjoying the struggle together as they mutually tried to decipher the stream of consciousness writing. “Neither of us (tutor and youth) were really into literature but we needed to read James Joyce’s novel ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.’ We had such a fun time struggling together and the interactions we had were really good.”

Bob’s advice for the next generation of tutors is to meet the youth where they are at. “Prepare for tutoring and learn how the teen is being taught so you don’t accidentally cause more confusion, especially in math.

Doing tutoring doesn’t mean that you will witness miraculous changes each week or even feel that you are accomplishing much at all over the course of a year. But showing up puts you in a spot where you just might be one of the ingredients that leads to a flourishing young person. Life doesn’t get any better than that!” – Bob

Bob fondly recalled an online tutoring session during the COVID pandemic, where he helped a student who was a big fan of the Korean boy-band, BTS. As their virtual tutoring session came to an end, Bob made the two-finger mini heart gesture to sign off. The youth was so delighted that this “old guy tutor” was more in tune with pop culture than she had expected. They shared a great laugh, breaking down another barrier. “High school kids can be lot of fun to interact with!”

Thank you, Bob Orange and all the Banyan tutors, for giving so much to Banyan Community. If you are interested in becoming a volunteer tutor, please reach out to development@banyancommunity.org