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No kidding, they're tutors Photo by Bob Pennell Crater High School students try to hold their poses during an improvisational game. They belong to an after-school tutoring program that helps elementary school kids who need remedial attention or just more challenges. From left are Clare Valdes, Amie Bell, Nathan Reed, Stephen Hammond (bending over), Thor Webb and Clifton Barnhart. In literacy program, grade-schoolers learn that high school is a fun place By VICKI GUARINO CENTRAL POINT -- While most Jewett Elementary students go home at the end of the school day, a few fourth- and fifth-graders instead go to high school. It's like regular school, says fourth-grader Brittanie Cwiklinski, except that afternoons at Crater are more fun. Since the beginning of the school year, small groups of Jewett students have been spending time with Crater students in a class that is part tutoring, part academic enrichment and mostly fun. The idea, says Jewett Principal Karen Lynch, is to get extra help to the students who need remedial attention as well as the exceptional students who need more challenges -- and do it in a way students can enjoy. The program to improve literacy runs on a $8,800 grant from Washington Mutual Bank. For Jewett students, the experiment has been wildly popular. Lynch has a waiting list of youngsters who want to get into one of five, six-week sessions. Crater High School senior Clifton Barnhart plays a game with Jewett Elementary fifth-grader Jeremiah Gann. The two work together in an after-school program at CHS. For Crater students, the sessions have been a chance to earn class credit for a different sort of assignment. High-schoolers are expected to plan daily activities for the hourlong sessions, and keep youngsters involved and enthusiastic about learning. "I look forward to this," says Crater senior Stephen Hammond from the sidelines of an improvisation exercise adapted from high school drama class. "The stuff these kids come up with is just amazing," says Hammond. "They go places older people just don't go." Every Friday afternoon, Hammond and five classmates meet with program coordinator Lynda Ellis to talk about the class' progress and work out the coming week's activities. They've had youngsters write and perform a play, read, and learn how to research reports on the Internet. "They decide what they want to do," says Ellis. "I'm just a moderator." The job hasn't been as easy as the high school students originally expected, says senior Amie Bell. Older students have struggled at times to present information in ways younger students can understand. But Bell and others say that when they do see progress, it has been particularly rewarding. Senior Clifton Barnhart, for instance, says he enjoys coaching young writers through the process of developing a story line. He wants to be a writer and says that helping younger students also has been good practice for him. Jewett fifth-grader Jeremiah Gann thought so much of Barnhart's help that he made his tutor the subject of one of his stories. The Crater sessions have given Jeremiah his first chance to write on a computer. "I like to write," he says, "especially on the computer. It's fun to push the keys." Beyond the popularity of the program, and the novelty of going to the high school, Lynch can see some real academic value in the sessions. "The students have done quite a bit of work -- without really realizing it sometimes," she says. "Hopefully, this will result in them wanting to do better in school." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA