The PCHS Peer Tutoring Club: Where students are teachers
January 18, 2024 at 12:29 a.m.
While some students are eager to head home after the final bell rings at Port Chester High School, others are just as excited to walk into the library to stay for an extra hour. They feel gratified knowing they’re there every Monday to help their fellow students as members of the Peer Tutoring Club.
The club offers a place for students who have demonstrated understanding in various subjects to guide their schoolmates who may be struggling in them or just looking for a helping hand on a particular assignment. It was started by Anthony Perciavalle, a math teacher at the school, who was motivated by his previous experiences.
“When I was in high school, we had a peer tutoring program,” Perciavalle recalled. He attended Clarkstown South High School in West Nyack. He said it was a great program, and it inspired him to create a similar setting in Port Chester.
“Four years ago, Mu Alpha Theta, the math honor society, did a peer tutoring virtual program,” he said. During the 2020-2021 school year, Port Chester High School students were on a hybrid schedule as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the advisor of the Mu Alpha Theta chapter, Perciavalle oversaw older students as they tutored underclassmen in subjects like geometry and algebra. “That was the inspiration for this,” he said.
Seniors Melany Monroy (left) and Kayley Martinez help each other out with pre-calculus and calculus, respectively. While both are tutors in the club, their services weren’t requested at the Jan. 8 meeting, so they opted to work with each other through assignments.By David Tapia
The next year, after students had returned to the classroom full-time, Perciavalle started the Peer Tutoring Club, meeting at the school library once a week for an hour. The program has students learning one-on-one in a more informal setting than a classroom. It’s so informal that Perciavalle said he and fellow co-advisor Alissa Thompson have a nearly hands-off approach to the club.
As students trickled into the library on Monday, Jan. 8, Perciavalle and Thompson paired them off—assigning any of the 25 tutors with pupils based on what they needed. Once the matches had been made, the pairs settled into work mode at a table.
Perciavalle said as of now, they have tutors for all subjects, ranging from global history to chemistry. According to Thompson, to become a tutor in a particular area of study, students must have scored a 90 or above in the class and submit a letter of recommendation from the teacher.
“We really just press send and see what happens,” Perciavalle said. The teachers don’t provide guides for the tutors, they let them teach in their own way. Though occasionally, the advisors will jump in to help with a question or two. “I walk around, and the students know that we’re here, but we really just leave them be.”
“Every situation is different,” Thompson said. “It’s really dependent on what each student brings to the tutor.”
Across the library, tutees pored over sheets of paper, homework packets and Chromebooks, nodding along as the older students walked them through topics.
Austin Nij, a sophomore, was visiting the club for the first time during its regular meeting time on Jan. 8. He was pointed towards the club by his global history teacher, who said if he ever needed help, he had peers who could provide it. He was paired with Kimberly Maldonado, a senior, and was discussing his history homework.
Maldonado said she signed up to be a tutor because she wanted the experience.
“I love teaching,” she said. “I want to study early education and I want to see how it feels to be a teacher. I think that this is a great help for that.” Other students, like junior Nataly Suertegaray just wanted to be able to help her fellow students.
“I’ve always been fond of helping and teaching others,” Suertegaray said. “So being able to share my knowledge with people who I know need it is really rewarding.”
It’s a feeling that other tutors share, like juniors Bertrand Arana-Moreau and Kevin Navichoque, who said they were so used to helping friends with schoolwork, they felt naturally drawn to the club.
However, others viewed the program from the eyes of those looking for help.
Kayley Martinez and Melany Monroy, both senior tutors, weren’t paired up with tutees that day. “If they don’t need us, we just work on stuff together,” Monroy said as they were working on pre-calculus and calculus assignments. Monroy joined because she’d been in the program as someone looking for help.
“I came here once for geometry,” Monroy said. “It helped me a lot. I don’t remember the tutor’s name, but she was so nice about it. She explained it all really well and now I get that amazing feeling of seeing people’s eyes go wide and tell me that they get it.”
In a similar vein, Martinez feels sympathy for students who are reluctant to ask for help.
“I signed up because I know that there are lot of people who are afraid to ask for help from adults,” Martinez said. “It’s easier to ask for help from people that are our age. I feel like it’s easier to give people what they need because they can talk to us easier.”
Through the students’ collaborative effort, the co-advisors are seeing them develop skills that they might not necessarily be able to teach in a traditional classroom setting.
“They’re learning how to help others through guidance,” Thompson said. “Not by directly telling them answers, but by showing them how to get there.”
The meeting on Monday saw the club nearly fill the library, but Perciavalle wants it to grow even more—ideally turning it into less of a club and more of an essence of school culture.
“The dream is for the library just to become the dedicated place where people can find peer tutors,” he said. “Because I’ve had informal conversations with kids who’ve told me that they feel better about what they needed help with. But for something like that to happen, we’d have to have a conversation about being reclassified as something else. But in my opinion, we’re doing great right now.”
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