As soon as the end of school bell finished ringing, the hallway filled with students at Ryan Middle School.
Most were eager to leave the building. But a few headed directly to Elliott Wyatt’s small afterschool tutor group room.
“What do you want to start?” Elliott asked one kid after another. “What are you here for?”
“Food!” every one of them answered. After getting a snack from a basket Elliott keeps, about a dozen students settled into bean bag chairs and regular chairs to start their homework.
“It’s like a snowball,” said Elliott, a former JOM student himself. “They come all at once.”
Elliott is a tutor for FNA’s Johnson O’Malley Program. He’s been at Ryan for one year and knows the teachers, and the curriculum. Most importantly, he knows how to reach the students.
“Try this way,” he coached a small group working on a long division worksheet. “Did that work?”
FNA JOM has Tutors and Family Service Coordinators working in elementary, middle, and high schools operated by the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District. The program provides academic tutoring, monitors attendance, and helps improve social-emotional skills for Alaska Native and American Indian students. In additional to academic help, JOM provides food boxes, transportation, winter gear, hygiene kits, and anything to help students succeed in school.
They also work with parents, host cultural activities, and for high school students, provide career and leadership activities. Most of the funding comes from the Department of Education.
“For 58 years, the educational success of our youth has remained central to our priorities, while honoring and
integrating our traditional values and practices in every way possible,” said Melissa Charlie, FNA Executive Director.
Charlie said FNA JOM is committed to increasing graduation rates, lowering dropout rates, closing the achievement gap, and teaching and sharing Indigenous cultural activities that strengthen identity and learning.
This past school year saw an increase in Tutors and Family Service Coordinators, which dramatically fell when the COVID-19 pandemic closed in-school learning.
More JOM staff in schools means more students receive services, said Mary Willey, FNA JOM director.
“We get two to three new students a day,” said Willey, a former JOM student. JOM serves 700 students in the Fairbanks school district.
Elliott is seeing new students looking to improve grades in the waning days of the winter semester. He’s also seeing return students.
“I’m improving,” said a returning student, 13 and in 8th grade. “I don’t have distractions when I’m working here.”
