Rising President Selected!

• By Tomi Elliott 3/2023

We are proud to announce that Nessar Hekmatjo has been selected as Willow Way Tutoring & Enrichment’s Rising President. Nessar joined us in June of 2020 as a Dari, Farsi, and Pashto translator, but very quickly moved into a dual tutor- translator role to work with students directly. Further illustrating his commitment to our cause, Nessar launched our junior translator program in 2021, extending his contribution to extend our multilingual capabilities. While currently pursuing a career in medicine at Sac State, Nessar continues to lend his time and expertise to WWT&E. His dedication, despite his busy schedule, is a testament to his commitment to supporting students. He is an invaluable tutor and leader both in working with students and in managing WWT&E itself. Nessar makes a tangible difference in the lives of our students and continues to impress us with his leadership capabilities and drive to support and uplift those around him. A big thank you from WWT&E for the work you've done, Nessar! We look forward to your continued support in shaping the future of our organization and our students. Nessar will serve as President of WWTE in 2024.

Newcomer Writing Circles Launched!

• By Tomi Elliott 1/2023

WWT&E is thrilled to announce our Writing Circles have launched! Students can now participate in online creative writing circles under the guidance of one of our award winning teen writers. These circles provide a nurturing space for students to explore and expand their writing abilities and, for those interested, provide an opportunity to share their writing with others by submitting their work to contests and publications. This mentorship offers a valuable opportunity for students to gain firsthand knowledge of the publishing process as well as for the world to benefit from hearing these original voices and talented writers.

Lifting Newcomer Voices

• By Tomi Elliott 12/2022

Willow Way Tutoring & Enrichment is excited to announce our launch of initiatives aimed at promoting creative writing skills in students and sharing their voices, perspectives, thoughts, and dreams with the world. Leading these events is published novelist and Scholastic's national gold medal winner, Avery Yue. Avery’s “Meet the Writer” sessions across three school districts in northern California provide students with accessible insights into the writing process and encouragement for their own writing. In addition, students with WWTE can now participate in online creative writing circles under Avery's guidance. These circles provide a nurturing space for students to explore and expand their writing abilities and, for those interested, provide an opportunity to share their writing with others by submitting their work to contests and publications. This mentorship offers a valuable opportunity for students to gain firsthand knowledge of the publishing process as well as for the world to benefit from hearing these original voices and talented writers.

Bilingual Read Aloud Library

• By Tomi Elliott 10/2022

In October, WWT&E officially launched the Willow Way bilingual Audio & Video Library! Even apart from the recent influx of younger students since our expansion into elementary schools, ready access to books read aloud bilingually are an important, but rare resource for ELL students and their literacy and language development. Classic kids books are rarely translated, and when they are, they can be hard to find and are best read bilingually. With the Willow Way Audio/Video Library, our wonderful tutors and translators are recording themselves reading picture and chapter books in both English and a second language, which are free to access on our website. Through these books, our students have a more accessible bank of bilingual voices and words, which improves vocabulary, grammar, and comfort with the English language and promotes literacy skills. Thank you to our tutors and translators for your invaluable help on making this project possible!

Walid's Work

• By Tomi Elliott 9/2022

Over at UC Davis, Walid Jailani, a tutor and former leader at WWT&E, has founded the Paths to College Club, a student-led organization dedicated towards providing guidance to newcomer students at Mira Loma High School in navigating a route to college. College applications, financial aid, and the journey to post-high school education in general, can be confusing and overwhelming when a student is the first in their family to attempt it. Walid’s club provides invaluable support and advice to these students, all from UC Davis university students who made that journey themselves. We love the work Walid is doing in his Paths to College Club and look forward to supporting his efforts. Great job, Walid!

Welcome to a New School Year!

• By Tomi Elliott 8/2022

Welcome back to WWT&E! We are so excited to begin the 2022-23 school year and get to work with our remarkable students. This is our third year in action and we are excited to see a return of so many of our amazing tutors and translators. Their unwavering commitment and impressive skills have truly enriched the lives of our students. We are also excited to extend a hearty welcome to our returning students from San Juan Unified School District students from 2021-22, as well as our many new students, as we have recently expanded into the Twin Rivers, and Elk Grove Unified School Districts. To all of our students: Welcome!! We are so happy to have you, and we are so looking forward to getting to know you and working together this year! See everyone on Zoom!

WWTE National Award Winners

• By Tomi Elliott 7/2022

Congratulations to our tutors and translators who earned national Congressional Awards, United Nations Awards, and Presidential Volunteer Service Awards! For high school and college aged individuals, these are national awards for community impact, requiring anywhere from 30 to 400 hours of volunteering. These are tremendous honors that require an incredible amount of diligence, dedication, and compassion. You guys are fantastic, wonderful, inspiring people and you have made such a change in our community. Thank you for your impactful work! Our community needs and appreciates each of you!

Willow Way Tutoring Receives Commendation from Congress

• By Tomi Elliott 6/2022

We are proud to announce that Willow Way Tutoring received San Juan Unfiied School District’s “Most Valuable Partner” Award recognizing our group’s dedication to and impact on students’ education. We are also proud to announce that we’ve received a distinguished letter of Congressional Commendation from our U.S. congressman, Dr. Ami Berra, for our work with students across the district for 2021-22. A huge congratulations to all of the tutors, translators, and volunteers who enable Willow Way Tutoring and Enrichment to have the impact that it does. Our success is directly attributed to our amazing tutors, translators, volunteers, and of course, our impressive students. Each plays an essential role in Willow Way's achievements. Our tutors, translators, and volunteers with their expert knowledge and skills, create an enriched learning environment and our students' dedication to learn and excel gives meaning to our efforts. These honors from the San Juan Unified School District and Congressman Dr. Ami Berra are significant milestones that recognize the commitment and impact of Willow Way Tutoring and inspire us to continue working to transform lives and positively impact the educational journey of our students.

Class Visits

• By Thomas Elliott 4/2022

Congratulations to Avery who won a National Gold Medal in the Scholastic Writing Contest for a short story in the Science Fiction/Fantasy category and published her trilogy of novels, a project 5 years in the making. Avery writes that she hopes, “to use this award and these books to inspire young writers, particularly from underserved communities. So many kids have a story to tell, but think that they couldn't possibly submit it to a contest or turn it into a book or think that it has to be of JK Rowling quality for it to be published. Finishing this trilogy was a really important experience for me to have, I think, especially when it came to building my self-confidence. I would love to encourage young students to write so they can have that experience too!"

Avery says that she is living proof that writing is a process that grows and evolves as the writer does. Avery was ten years old when she started writing a trilogy about a young girl who, through a series of mishaps, was raised by a pack of wolves. The novels cover themes of family, belonging, and identity as the main character evolves over the three books and comes to terms with the differences between herself and others. Avery says that as the main character changes, "readers can see my growth as a writer as well since I grow from age ten to fifteen throughout the drafting and editing process!” Avery will visit local 4th-6th grade classrooms to tell their students about the books, how she wrote them, and the importance of stories in general. She will answer student questions, read a small excerpt from the trilogy, and lead a class writing game.

Junior Translator Program Has Launched!

• By Avery Yue 3/2022

Thank you to Nessar, who is successfully leading our new Junior Translator program! This is super helpful and we’re all incredibly grateful for his help! The Junior Translator Program pairs multilingual, high achieving middle schoolers to serve as translators for high school aged content experts. Together they provide tutoring to refugee and newcomer students. “There are so many talented, skilled kids in younger grades who want to help their communities, and this is a great way for them to be involved and see the value they can add,” Alexander reported. “Being fluent in two languages, let alone three-plus like many of our junior translators are, is really impressive and valuable. Our junior translators have something tremendous to offer the world. It’s great to give them the opportunity to use their knowledge and skills to serve others.”
Willow Way Tutoring & Enrichment is all about taking the knowledge and skills a person has gained and using it to better the world. Our newest volunteers, while young, fit right in and are already impressively impactful. Nessar, one of our top multilingual tutors over the past 3 years, is leading and managing this program. He recruits, trains, supports, and monitors all of our junior translators, which is no easy task. Thank you again, Nessar, for your impactful contribution to Willow Way Tutoring & Enrichment. This program would not be possible without you!

AP Prep Program Launched

• By Avery Yue 2/2022

In our tutoring program, we have encountered students from schools with limited resources to support students' efforts in advanced courses. We informally ran a drop in tutoring program in 2021 for a few AP subjects, but are happy to announce that we now have a formal program that can support students in 15 AP courses. Every Sunday, for five hours, under-resourced students in these courses can drop-in for free AP homework or test prep support with a tutor who has obtained a perfect score on that test.

Congratulations to our 2021 PVSA Winners!

• By Avery Yue 1/2022

Congratulations to our tutors who earned the President’s Volunteer Service Award in 2021! That’s an incredibly difficult task to do, so fantastic job to all who accomplished it! You guys are awesome, inspiring people and you have made such a change in these communities. What’s all this about? The President’s Volunteer Service Award was created by President Bush to, according to him, “recognize the important role of volunteers in America’s strength and national identity.” The award is to honor those individuals whose service has positively impacted communities all across the United States and inspire others to take action and serve as well. Since then, every US President after Bush has continued the program, and so we can now say we are proud to announce our 2021 President Volunteer Service Award earners: Nohemi Vela Guevara, Erik Uerkwitz, Nessar Hekmatjo, Walid Jailani, Alice Lee, Ella Stone, Alexander Yue, and Avery Yue.

Halloween Treat Bags!

• By Avery Yue 10/2021

We thought it would be fun to create and share Halloween treat bags with our refugee and newcomer students, many of whom were experiencing the holiday for the first time and had a lot of questions about it! This was a big hit last year with the students and, with students back to in-person learning, it would be a lot easier to pass them out! We assembled 100 treat bags and opened 500 glow band bracelets to share with the students and their siblings. The students had a lot of fun looking inside their bags, trying on the spider rings and sampling some of the candy. The glow bracelets, though, were the biggest hit with kids and parents alike as they snapped the sticks and watched the liquid change into a neon color that glowed in the dark!

Supplies Drives for Our New Neighbors

• By Avery Yue 10/2021

With at least 2,500 Afghan refugees expected to arrive in Sacramento over the next few weeks, we wanted to know how we could help welcome our new neighbors and soon-to-be students. In our meeting with the refugee team for our community, we asked what we could do to support their arrivals and learned that the team’s biggest worry was having the items they knew would be needed and in short supply. Some of the items were not a surprise. Furniture, clothing, household and personal care items were noted. However, we also learned that we should expect some of our new neighbors to have mobility issues unable to be addressed and provided for during the first few weeks of their arrival. The team would love to be able to loan out wheelchairs, walkers, and canes for those weeks of waiting, if they had access to those things. In response, we did a supply drive and were able to donate furniture, clothing, household items, and personal supplies for the refugee team to distribute! Wheelchairs and other mobility helpers were harder to procure, but Dr. Holly Haight and the Peterson family came to the rescue by donating wheelchairs, canes and walkers to the team. Thank you to everyone who donated, organized, and transported these items!

Congressional Award Winner!

• By Thomas Elliott 7/2022

Congratulations to Alexander who earned a Congressional Award Gold medal! The Congressional Award is the highest honor awarded to a youth civilian by the United States’ Congress and “recognizes initiative, service, and achievement in America’s youth” through the attainment of a variety of goals that, among other things, require at least 800 years of validated service work and a five day expedition to further personal growth. Over the course of 2 ¼ years, Alexander has completed 571 hours of voluntary public service, 332 hours of personal development, 593 hours of physical fitness, and a 5-day, 4-night solo-camping & group-backpacking trip. Approximately 500 youth win the award annually from a pool of 43,654 individuals who participate in the program. Congratulations, Alexander!

Free Physicals Program Launched!

• By Avery Yue 9/2021

This fall, we learned that many of our students would be dropped from their free, after-school soccer program unless they could obtain records of a sports physical. These soccer programs are enormously impactful to our students, as they enable kids to develop team building skills, create friendships, and experience a feeling of belonging and connection to their school. In response, we found doctors and physician’s assistants willing to donate a few hours of their time after work. The school district that runs this program provided space for us to conduct the physicals and donated additional translators to assist parents in completing the health history portions of the form. We provided 3 medical doctors and 1 physician’s assistant, medical supplies like stethoscopes and scales, and volunteers to help measure weight, height, and blood pressure, as well as play games with the students while they waited their turn with the doctors. Our first event was a huge success and we have since added additional sessions over the school year to provide physicals to any students participating in other free sports programs, such as basketball. Willow Way Tutoring & Enrichment has now provided over 800 free sports physicals to our refugee, newcomer, and low-income students across multiple dates this school year! A huge thank you to all of the volunteers who took time out of their days to serve, and a special thanks to all the doctors who have worked tirelessly for our students and make this program possible.

Thoughts and Prayers!

• By Avery Yue 8/2021

As many of you know, our community is home to the largest number of Afghan refugees nationwide. However, we learned we still have 27 SJUSD students from 19 families who are currently trapped in Afghanistan. The refugee team from the school district is doing everything they can to try to get them home, but it is a complicated situation. In our community, 1,700 of our students enrolled are of Afghan origin, many of whom return to visit family each summer. This past summer was no different. Please join us in praying and sending good thoughts to our neighbors and students trying to return home.

Welcome to a New School Year!

• By Avery Yue 8/2021

Welcome to a new school year! We cannot wait to meet and start working with our refugee and newcomer students! We will provide multilingual academic and SEL support from 3-8pm each day. We will serve students in over 30 schools and aim to provide more than 3000 hours of support for newcomer and refugee students. We are looking forward to making new friends and changing lives, including our own! We have been working hard behind the scenes to create fliers in students’ native languages that teachers will pass out in their classes, code an automated tutoring appointment reminder system with information in the students’ native languages to bolster attendance, code an appointment scheduling system, and progress report tracker to make monthly progress reports to referring teachers more efficient and impactful. A huge thank you to our tutors and translators who made this happen!! Let’s go!!

Year One is a Wrap!

• By Avery Yue 6/2021

Willow Way Tutoring began working with the refugee and newcomer students of San Juan Unified School District in mid-June, 2020. We started as a small team of 6 tutors providing support from 9am-3pm each day in a virtual summer school program. During the school year, the number of students needing multilingual academic support grew and so did we. A year later, we were a strong team of 30+ tutors speaking 12+ languages serving 16+ schools. Together we provided over 2500 hours of support for newcomer and refugee students. In these hours, friendships were formed and lives were changed -for both the students and the tutors. In our off hours, we provided in-person events and enrichment activities. The work behind the scenes was immense and we thank all who helped make this past year a huge success. We are already looking forward to the year ahead and the impact we can continue to make.

Ella Wins Contest in Landslide!

• By Avery Yue 5/2021

Congratulations to Ella Stone who won our Outstanding Tutor of the Month competition! Ella put together weekly canva fliers and sent them to her team of students via text and email, writing in their own language to encourage their attendance in tutoring. In one month's time, she sent over 60 such messages! We asked Ella to share a bit about herself and what she likes about volunteering with Willow Way Tutoring. Here's what she shared...

Hi, my name is Ella Stone. I am a 15-year-old who enjoys outdoor activities and having a good time. I believe learning can be fun as well. With a love for knowledge and assisting others, I intend to earn my Bachelor’s in Mathematics at 17 and my Master’s in Teaching at 19.

As a volunteer with WWTutoring, it brings me joy to see students understand topics they previously struggled with. More importantly, WWTutoring students find a fun and welcoming environment where they can fit in and be themselves. Whether our students need assistance with a homework assignment or are simply joining us to hang out, we are always happy to see them.
Ella is clearly on her way to becoming an impactful teacher and we feel lucky to have her on our team at Willow Way Tutoring. Thank you, Ella!!

Spring Park Day!

• By Avery Yue 4/2021

For our students, spring arrived with the start of many new great things, such as in-person schooling for a few hours each week. We celebrated by holding an in-person park day to share some of our favorite spring traditions with our refugee & newcomer friends. We filled plastic eggs with candy and hid them in a grassy field for the students to find. We played music and outdoor park games such as soccer, Simon Says, & created a fun filled obstacle course complete with a crazy Limbo contest.

Back to School Clothes

• By Avery Yue 1/2021

With the promise of a return to in-person learning and with it, the exchange of pjs for school clothes, we thought of our newcomer & refugee students and how they might be feeling about attending their new schools for the first time in-person. We thought some of them might feel like us and want a great outfit for their first day back. We definitely prefer a shopping trip in a cool friend's closet over a trip to the mall. So that's just what we did here. We pulled together boxes of clothing donated by our very favorite and most stylish friends and shared them with our students. We hope they loved the selections as much as we did!

Thanksgiving!

• By Avery Yue 11/2020

Despite all of the loss we've experienced lately from the pandemic, there is still a lot to be grateful for. So we wanted to do our best to share some Thanksgiving spirit with our refugee & newcomer students who are new to this American holiday. We bought and assembled Thanksgiving bags filled with candy & other fun treats. We then bundled up so we could safely pass out the goodie bags at a local library's parking lot. Later, we hosted a zoom session to watch, “Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” and played games on zoom with our students and some of their family members!

Halloween!

• By Avery Yue 10/2020

Celebrating Halloween safely in a pandemic is tricky, but we wanted to give it a try in order to share our favorite Halloween traditions with our refugee & newcomer students who were curious about this new holiday. We bought and assembled Halloween bags filled with candy, glow sticks, plastic spiders, spooky stickers, & other treats. We also decorated a car and then passed out our goodie bags to our students at the local library. Later, we hosted a zoom session to watch, “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” and played pictionary and Bingo with our students.