It is Stacia Klim’s first year volunteering as a tutor at FLOC as she started this September, but she’s no stranger to tutoring. As a matter of fact, she has been tutoring since high school when she coordinated a Section 8 tutoring program. Stacia said she started volunteering at FLOC because she wanted to do more than just go to her job each day, and she wanted to work with kids again. Fortunately for all of us, she found FLOC through a volunteer match website at her job.
She works with a 9-year-old student named Rya, and she brightens as soon as she starts talking about her. “Rya really loves Scrabble and other interactive games,” she said. “She’s a visual person, so I make up games or storyboards for her to use as visuals. She also loves whiteboards, so we try to use those as much as possible.”
Right now Stacia and Rya are working on building sentences and spelling. “Sometimes I feel like she’s the teacher because she makes up her own games,” Stacia told me. “She’ll be like, ‘How about we have the fox eat the word if I get it wrong?’” Stacia finds her work at FLOC especially rewarding because she’s not just helping students with their homework. She, like all our volunteer tutors, uses a structured curriculum to help bring her student up to grade level in reading. “You really are a teacher here,” she said.
One of Stacia’s favorite FLOC memories was the holiday party, where she and Rya “accessorized” Rya’s paper reindeer. As it turns out, both of them are very interested in fashion and it was a great bonding experience. She happily remembered how excited Rya was to go to the arts and crafts tables and teach her some “Rya-style” origami.
In addition to her time spent tutoring, Stacia also works at United Way and is currently collaborating with FLOC on a social media fundraiser that was known last year as “Give to the Max.” She says that she was fortunate enough to go to college at AmericanUniversity, so she has a lot of good friends still in the area and in her free time she loves a good Georgetown basketball game.
Here at FLOC, we are happy to have the opportunity to showcase another talented, committed tutor like Stacia. We are truly lucky to have her on board.
(Rachel Baxter is the Bilingual Recruitment & Outreach Assistant at FLOC).
