Most Jefferson students are sleeping in, completing homework, or baking bread while celebrating the end of in-person learning. However, juniors Sreenidhi Sankararaman and Grishma Baruah have been working to return personal academic help to students in the area. They recently established Teach to Care, an organization whose mission is to provide academic mentoring to younger students whose learning has been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.  

“We decided to create Teach to Care after we realized that students were lacking in-person teaching and interactive learning. Specifically, after we saw that children of front-line workers were unable to even have their parents as support in learning, we knew we had to do something to help improve the learning of students,” Sankararaman said. 

Elementary and middle school children in need can register as mentees on Teach to Care’s website. 

“For the most part, we hope to help the children of front-line workers but we also want Teach to Care to be an organization that can help anyone in need. Due to that, we also welcome children to join who need any additional support due to certain circumstances,” Baruah said. 

High school students can sign up to help as mentors. Mentees will be assigned to a high school-aged mentor during May 2020.

“A mentor is mainly someone who helps out children as a tutor,” Baruah said. “Mentors can schedule online lessons with their mentees, helping them with certain subjects or school work.” 

A few students have already registered as Teach to Care mentees, and Baruah hopes that as they spread the word online, they will see a steady increase in mentor registration. 

“So far, we have been reaching out using [Facebook] posts and we also have a website and an [Instagram] account. In addition, it has moved through community group chats and a neighborhood website that can reach out to over 13,000 people,” Sankararaman said. “We plan to continue advertising as we develop a larger communications team.”

Teach to Care is currently focused on assisting children who need academic or emotional assistance on a regional level. However, they hope to later expand to help children all over the nation, during and even after the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided.

“Hopefully in the near future, when the COVID-19 crisis starts to improve, we still want to have the Teach to Care organization present,” Baruah said. “We want to be able to help more children in need.”