About Us
Our Mission
We work to foster peer-tutoring relationships that enhance the learning of the students we tutor and provide meaningful experience to our teen volunteers.
Our NEW VISION
We work to spread the use of high-impact tutoring as a solution to educational inequity by (1) supporting its legislative implementation and (2) researching the benefits of our high-impact peer-tutoring model.
(1) High-Impact Tutoring is becoming known as the single most effective way of accelerating student learning and overcoming educational inequity. We support advocacy groups, educators, and legislators hoping to enact policy that implements high-impact tutoring both at state and local levels, by providing resources, direction, and testimonial.
(2) In the Fall of 2022 we will pilot a peer-tutoring program in a school district that serves as a research study for a qualified research institution. The study aims to prove the unique benefits of high impact peer-tutoring, which has yet to be explored in this new research area, and could become a leading solution for many districts due to its cost-effectiveness, tutor availability, and advancements of the tutor-student relationship.
Districts, research programs, change-makers or donors interested in playing a role, contact us
Check out our news story!
We also got featured in 425 Magazine! Check it out: https://www.425business.com/profiles/ask-joshua-and-sophie-wolters/article_30722dc4-30fc-11ec-a319-ab2277db4a3a.html
90% of students tutored improved at least a letter grade in math
What We Have Done
Our peer-tutoring program currently facilitates over 100 tutoring matches. Since the Fall of 2020, we have recruited, screened, and trained over 200 tutors and have matched them with students whose academic needs met the tutors’ academic strengths. Tutoring occurs after school in Zoom Breakout Rooms. Every tutoring session is supervised by a Student Connection Director who stays in the main lobby. To reach students and tutors, we have partnered with school districts, low-income housing developments, homeless shelters, and community-based nonprofits.
Our Tutors
All our tutors are volunteer high schoolers from King County. We recruit tutors by presenting to service-oriented high school clubs. Every tutor submits a written application, attends an interview, passes a Washington State criminal history background check, and attends a teaching/diversity training. We accept tutors who possess commitment skills, a strong character, mindfulness, experience, and academic strength.
Who We Serve
While any student is eligible for tutoring, most of the students we serve come from one or more of the following backgrounds or groups:
Low-income backgrounds
Immigrants and refugees
Homelessness and foster care
English learners
Underrepresented groups (including African American/Black, Hispanic or Latina, and people with origins from the Middle East, Asia, and Africa)
Our Values
Our Story
Student Connection began in 2019 when three students from Skyline High School in Sammamish, Washington realized there was an abundance of students at their school seeking to volunteer and many students in their community that couldn’t afford tutors. They recruited a handful of their classmates and began tutoring weekly at a nearby low-income after school care program. Within weeks, the students noticed an impact greater than they expected. The kids they tutored began to become more motivated to do their homework, improved their problem solving skills, and developed mentorship relationships with their tutors.
After seeing their impact, they knew they needed to expand. With the help of community partners, including the Renton and Seattle Southside Chamber of Commerce and the Sammamish Rotary Club, they turned their small-scale tutoring operation into a non-profit aimed at replicating the first program in many communities across King County. Now, with over 100 tutoring matches, several of the original tutors still tutor and help out at the organizational level.
Our first chapter, 2019