It’s finals week, which means that everyone has been studying furiously for the past few days. But even before finals, NHS tutors have been helping Heritage students with questions and homework for the entire year.
Mrs. Jacelyn Peach, one of the faculty advisors for the NHS program at Heritage, says that they started the tutoring program as a way of giving back to the Heritage community. “It’s about building that sense of community and helping in the different ways that we can.”
Mrs. Abigail Wade, the school’s other NHS advisor, agrees. “This is NHS giving back to the school, and the NHS members are required to help the struggling students.”
Akhil S. ’25 tutored for NHS last year. He says that when he spent his volunteering hours on tutoring in the Flight Center or Academic Workshop his time would be spent helping students who came in. “I just helped out with whatever I could… anything that I was comfortable helping with.”
Unfortunately, there are very few slots available for NHS members to tutor, only “ about 20 each quarter,” Wade says. That means there are only around 80 slots available each year.
This very limited availability creates a struggle for the members of the NHS who are trying to be selected to do the tutoring hours. As Akhil, who’s not tutoring this year because of said availability, mentions, “We’ve got 800 kids [in the NHS at Heritage].”
Peach says that everyone has a relatively equal chance of getting a tutoring spot, depending on their availability. “[The students] fill out what their off hours are and what tutoring location they’d have a preference for and when. Everybody has a good chance [to get a tutoring slot], but we do give priority to Seniors.”
This limited availability is getting better, Akhil says. “There’s a lot more spots available in individual classes as well as Academic Workshop [than last year].”
NHS tutoring is incredibly valuable for the Heritage community, even in spite of the difficulty getting a spot in the program poses.