Homework Club

We've not posted much about The Gathering's Homework Club for a while, despite posting loads of stuff about the Soup Kitchen, so here's an update on things....

As the school year winds towards the end we've had a few kids drop out of the Homework Club.  Some have moved away from Firgrove and some just think they're too cool for school.

So we're down to 28 kids from 32, but those that are committed are seeing great improvements in their overall schooling, and we're loving the privilege of walking with them as they achieve the best they can.

We're also super excited to see how so many of our kids constantly nail the Competition Quizzes. They're competing against kids from 19 other centres and this makes us very proud, because some of these kids are fighting huge uphill battles on a daily basis.

We already have a waiting list for 2019 so we're still on course for growing the Homework Club to 48 kids next year and we're very excited about this. We'll achieve it by cutting each session down from one hour to 45 minutes, and reducing the break between sessions from 30 to 15 minutes and we'll add in an extra session each day. The Homework Club will then start 15 minutes earlier each day and finish at 5:30 as it does now.

Sadly we're going to have to change some of our policies next year and remove the few kids who come but don't attend school. Currently we have four persistent non-attenders and one lad has now done Gr4 with us twice and it makes no sense to allow him to do Gr4 again. We're trying to help  their families, but tragically, some of them are just not interested in getting their kids in to school. Also, we're trying to build our partnership with the local primary school and complement their work. Add in the fact that the Maths@Home program builds on what the kids are learning at school each week and this makes it difficult to entertain those not attending.

We're really looking forward to our Awards Ceremony at the end of the month when we'll honour each of our kids. Stay tuned for pics and a report...