Over the past year, JaVaughn Perkins has spent over 80 hours engaging and connecting with our students in Detroit in our After-school Tutoring. He is a volunteer who truly shares the values that we hold here at 826michigan when working with students. JaVaughn always walks into the doors of the Detroit Robot Factory to greet everyone with a warm, welcoming demeanor, whether you’re a student, another volunteer, or a staff member. Genuinely curious and keen to learn, when he is not tutoring a student, he’s engaged in a conversation to learn more about them, getting to know the person rather than just a student. While he isn’t one for too many games, students respect his willingness to jump in wherever needed and how he keeps them on task.
Though we’re an organization that’s centered on developing creative writing skills, our tutoring services expand beyond that. Many students come to us with homework from many subjects, from understanding the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, to collaborating on a robotics project to figure out how to make a robot move. To what shouldn’t come as a surprise by now, JaVaughn has actually done both during our after-school tutoring. It’s just another skill set that he encompasses, the ability to seamlessly move from one subject to another.
When he’s not in the writing lab tutoring our students, he’s out keeping an eye on the Great Lakes’ water levels for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (FYI, these water levels have reached a level high this past year).
Thank you, JaVaughn, for all that you contribute to here at 826michigan. Without volunteers like JaVaughn, we wouldn’t be able to do what we do.
