Working in the Schools

Working In The Schools (WITS), a tutoring and mentoring program involving community members, area businesses and local high school students, provides volunteers to support the education and development of children in the Chicago Public Schools.

WITS offers four distinct tutoring programs: Power Lunch; Workplace Mentoring; Classroom Assistants; and the Saturday Program. The first two cater to business groups. Power Lunch is a lunchtime literacy program matching corporate volunteers with elementary school students, one-on-one, during the school day. Workplace Mentoring is an after school program where 5th and 6th grade students travel to a workplace for one-on-one tutoring.

For individual volunteers, WITS offers the Saturday Program and Classroom Assistants. The Saturday Program involves two-hour, one-on-one reading and phonecs mentoring sessions from January-April, and Classroom Assistants volunteer an average of three hours each week during the school day, working individually or in small groups in their assigned class.

Involved Schools: Beaubien, Brown, Byrd, Doolittle, Drake, Ferguson Gladstone, Grant, Haines, Hibbard, Jenner, Jefferson, Jordan, Jungman, Manierre, Mann, Medill, Peabody, Peirce, Schiller, South Loop, Stowe, Tilton, Yale, Walsh

Number of volunteers: 1668

Length of orientation/training: 1 hour

Average time commitment per volunteer: 1-1.5 hrs every other week for corporate volunteers. A minimum of 2 hrs per week for individual volunteers.

Please proceed to the on-line application. Upon completion of the on-line application, you will be contacted by a program volunteer coordinator. You may also contact the volunteer coordinator, DiSheen Smith at 773-553-1540.