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The Reach Initiative offers ACT tutoring, helps students excel
(left to right) Ashley Jones, Walter Turner and Chastity Taswell
Birmingham-area high school students who are looking for a new way to study for the ACT finally have a new venue.
The Reach Initiative, which started at the beginning of this year, is a group of college students from UAB and Samford who have dedicated every other weekend to mentoring and tutoring high school students in preparation of the ACT.
The group, comprising of Ebony Hinton, Chasity Taswell, Abdular Kuaan, Phillip Philon, Sam Mobley III, Jacob Wooten, Erin Hulsey, Travis Lilley, Adrian Jones, Walter Turner, and B. Positive’s own Ashley Jones, is one that Jones believes will help Birmingham’s youth in terms of their success rate on the exam.
“We wanted to start the group to positively impact the low graduation/college entrance rates we observed in the Birmingham metro area primarily among minority students,” said Jones. “We believe that if given the right study techniques and some opportunities to practice, we can help raise these students’ scores enough to gain them entrance to a two year or four year university. We want them to strive for higher education–in today’s society, education is key, and we couldn’t just stand back and watch students in our own backyard miss out on higher education.”
Jones said that the group holds two sessions per semester. “Each session is four Saturdays long, and each Saturday consists of two classes–around 1 and a half hour each–and a lunch break. Each of the four ACT subjects are taught for the first three Saturdays, and on the final Saturday, a mock ACT is administered.” According to Jones, everyone in the group is involved in the teaching process. “I teach English with Erin; Walter, Jacob and Travis teach Math; Ebony, Adrian and Phillip teach Science, and Chasity teaches Reading.”
So far, Jones says the group has received successful feedback from their work with the students and hopes the group will continue long after she and her friends have graduated. “We give the students evaluations [about The Reach Initiative’s performance] after every session, and so far, the students find the sessions helpful,” she said. “We want to continue them [the students] until we graduate and hand the program over to other UAB students; it’s a UAB student program, and we hope it thrives after we’re gone.”
One of the things Jones is excited about is actually seeing her group’s lessons help the students with their problem areas. “I think the best thing for me is to see the students learning,” she said. “When a student completes a set of practice questions and gets them all right, or even if they get them wrong and realize their mistakes, it’s great to see that learning happen. I feel better about myself when I see their minds working, and I feel that they’ll be able to take these skills into the testing room when they take the ACT.” One lesson she hopes the group is imparting, however, is that the ACT is just a test.
“[T]he ACT isn’t an unconquerable monster,” she said. “They can master the test and make a good enough score to get into a university and succeed. I hope they see that college is an option, and they’re full of more knowledge than they know.”
This is the first operational year for The Reach Initiative, and the group hopes to grow from this point forward. “[W]e’re a small organization that wants to make a big difference in Birmingham,” said Jones. “We’ve started from the ground up, and we’d love to establish relationships with organizations in the Birmingham community to make our program better for our students.”
If you would like any information about The Reach Initiative, you can call Jones at (205) 936-7574, the group’s secretary, Chasity Taswell at (205) 427-4447 or email The Reach Initiative at thereachinitiative@gmail.com or reach@uab.edu. You can also download their brochure here.
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