Student-led Organization Students Tutor Students Grows Drastically
Student-led and founded organization Students Tutor Students (STS) has drastically grown throughout the quarantine, gaining recognition from the greater public such as KGW News.
Students Tutor Students began as a small group of students aimed to match struggling students with tutors, and now the organization has expanded large enough to develop a website, prevalent social media presence, summer camp, and soon an app.
“When we began we were a small organization and all we wanted to focus on was getting kids the tutors they needed so they could succeed in online school,” said senior Ziggy Berkoff, Public Relations Director of STS. “Since then, we’ve…expanded [STS] to more about affecting education in Oregon as a whole and less about getting tutors to people, [although] that’s still our main point. We’ve grown so much that we have over 100 tutors.”
The summer program, titled the Kickstart Summer Program, was developed during this past summer, with a goal to have multiple student-teachers from different schools participate in creating a variety of classes, with subjects ranging from art to math
“We were able to work with over 110 students on bolstering their summer education,” senior Devansh Khunteta said. “In addition, we were able to create a sense of community through movie nights and these fun activities we continually held [during the summer program].”
Khunteta, the Chief Technology Officer on the executive board for STS, is also currently working on developing an app in order to make education as accessible as possible during this time of social distancing.
“I hope to release the app with the rest of my team sometime later in October, and that’s one initiative that we’ve been focusing on quite a lot,” Khunteta said. “The impetus and motivation behind why we want to do it was because we recognize that students oftentimes use their mobile devices a lot more for work. For example, [we] use our iPads a lot, so it’d be really awesome to have that mobile application where you can automatically be matched with a tutor who can help you out, as well as chat with them all throughout this one interface.”
In addition to the app, STS’s social media presence brought them to KGW’s attention. Through their Instagram profile and email, STS has been talking to KGW, but decided to pause the conversation as KGW was busy covering the election. However, the upcoming feature on STS developed when a photographer from KGW reached out to the organization.
“We had a lot of posts concerning Kickstart and how our summer program went, and apparently they found it pretty intriguing, so they had a photographer reach out to us on Instagram,” Khunteta said. “He was sort of just like, ‘Hey we saw what you guys are doing and we want to talk more about Kickstart and your future initiatives. Would you mind setting up this interview and discussing?’”
In order to prepare for the interview, the executive board met over Zoom and reviewed key points they wished to make during the interview so viewers could better understand their mission and organizational goals. The feature on STS is predicted to air next week, and focuses on STS’s future goals as well as current progress.
“I think that STS is an ambitious organization and we are going to try our hardest to impact education in Oregon for the better before we all graduate,” Berkoff said.
Scout Jacobs is a managing editor for the Jesuit Chronicles at Jesuit High School. As a senior in high school, this is her third year doing Journalism, and she loves to write. Journalism has been a primary passion of hers throughout highschool, and she hopes to continue this passion through college. Outside of school and writing, Scout enjoys reading, hanging out with friends, and listening to music. She is on the swim team at Jesuit, and has been swimming since she was a freshman. Born and raised in Portland, OR, Scout has an older brother who graduated Jesuit last year, who is now attending Seattle University. In her free time, she is usually watching a movie or spending time with her family at home or at fun destinations around Portland. Her favorite subject in school is English, and she has been taking French throughout her high school career in hopes of becoming fluent in the language. She loves the outdoors, and her favorite activity to do with friends is to go on a hike or go swimming. During the weekends and long breaks, Scout usually visits her family in Seattle, where most of her extended family lives. Both of her parents are architects, and she loves hearing about their work and the creativity they use to feel passionate about their work.