Our Volunteers

Meet a few of our wonderful volunteer tutors. They are the heart of CEP! 

As a recent Oakland transplant, Ally joined CEP in August 2015 in the hopes of becoming an active member in her new community. Ally was paired with a clever 4th grade boy with a great sense of humor! As a former teacher turned researcher, she missed interacting with kids, so working with and developing a relationship with her student and his family has been a very special experience. Ally and her student usually spend their tutoring sessions doing homework and having multiplication and division competitions; for her student, the more you can make assignments and activities into games, the better! 
 
Ally generously donated more of her time to CEP by sharing her expertise in Social Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum. She has created easy-to-use SEL resources that will be shared with all volunteers so that they can more easily guide the youth we serve on a deeper level in their social-emotional development.​

Ed Schultz was one of CEP’s first volunteers. In fact, he attended our very first volunteer training back in 2011! Since then, Ed has worked with five different students and is currently working with Isabel. In his words, “Isabel is a delight and a privilege to mentor. We meet once a week for 1 to 1.5 hours to work on her math. Isabel is a high school senior, and her goal after graduation is to work as an Oakland police officer in forensics. Being retired, joining CEP and tutoring young students who have lesser means has given me solace and an opportunity to give back to the community. Thank you Community Education Partnerships.”

Jimmy and his student just reached their year anniversary of working together! This past MLK day, Jimmy took his student on a service learning field trip. Here is how he described it: "I took my student with me to do some volunteer work at the MLK Jr. Shoreline Park in Oakland. I think it was a great experience for her to see people from diverse backgrounds come together for the betterment of their community, and a great way to honor and celebrate Reverend Dr. MLK Jr.'s legacy. She worked very hard and was exhausted by the end, but it was definitely worth it. We both enjoyed the experience, plus treating her to a yummy lunch ended our day on a great note."

After learning about CEP from a co-worker who also volunteered for CEP, Lana got involved as a tutor for a middle school student. Each week's tutoring session brings something different for the duo - algebra, chemistry, essays, and venn diagrams! Lana says, "Every teen in middle school can benefit from the presence of a consistent adult who isn't in their family. While I have never been an expert in these subjects, it's been fun to learn and practice algebra and science together." Lana likes that her student attends the same middle school in Berkeley that she once attended - a few weeks ago they got to spend their tutoring session picking out high school classes for next year.
 
Lana has helped us develop our training materials for new volunteers by compiling recent statistics on families affected by homelessness in the Bay Area and documenting the intense impact that homelessness has on children. Thank you, Lana! 

I joined CEP with a roar - a brother and sister each wanted a tutor, on the condition that both of them had someone to work with. So Anjel, Larry and I are now a CEP trio! At the end of our last session, Anjel paused midway through a Distributive Property problem to ask, "Miss Leah, do you like teaching us?" My answer was quick. "I do. You're both so great. And I love it that you want to learn." She nodded and resumed her work. "Do you like learning from me?" I asked, in kind. "Yes," she said. "This is really good." Only moments later, I learned that she had skipped a field trip that day because she didn't want to miss our tutoring session. As with all good things in life, I'm learning more than they are, and I'm looking forward to our days and months ahead.

I started volunteering for CEP in June 2015. When I initially signed up with CEP, I knew my work schedule would be a challenge because it's very unpredictable, but I was committed to volunteering and was paired with a 16 year old girl who also has an unpredictable schedule. We hit it off right away! This student is a feisty teen longing to connect with someone and in need of intense academic support. She has now moved out of the Bay Area, but during our time together, I greatly enjoyed seeing her make progress regarding her reading level and in her attitude towards school. I have recently been paired with a middle school boy and look forward to connecting with him and tackling 8th grade math.