JFK Becomes 2nd Denver High School to Provide Paper 24/7 Online Tutoring
John F. Kennedy High School becomes the second high school in Denver Public Schools to partner with Paper to provide 24/7, unlimited, multilingual live help and essay feedback from trained tutors.
The partnership grants access to all 882 high school students in the IB World School starting in the 2020 fall semester. Principal Tiffany Almon was drawn to Paper after assessing a need for constant touchpoints for students in a remote learning environment.
Principal Almon stated:
We feel that Paper and some other platforms are a way for our students to get constant touchpoints and support no matter what time of day it is or the different courses that they've been enrolled in.
“We also knew that our students were contacting our teachers 24/7 and they were getting very frustrated when their teachers weren't able to get back to them immediately."
[Our students] were contacting our teachers 24/7, and they were getting very frustrated when our teachers would not email them back immediately. Our students' hours have changed; they're up at 2 a.m. working on homework, working on classwork. And they just need to have a reliable source that is content-based so that they can ask questions and get feedback with any of their academic concerns. So that last piece is what I think is most powerful about Paper.
“Another huge shift for us is—and this is why I think Paper’s going to be a huge asset to our school, especially our IB students—is we’re going into a semester block, which means we are offering four different courses per semester that will be finished each semester.
"So this fall, you could actually have both English and Math periods, and not have those again next spring. And we know that there’s already the summer slide, and now our summer slide might be that much longer by essentially being extended by a semester.”
What drew the high school from a teacher perspective, was that Paper’s tutors are trained not to give answers, and instead utilize strategic questioning to guide students and build their skills. Paper's platform lets teachers rest assured knowing they don't need to be accessible to students at all hours of the day. Reports delivered to teachers by Paper identify trends in their students' learning and alert them to areas requiring individualized attention.
Paper, for a fixed cost to the school, grants unlimited tutoring access and essay feedback to students. Students can receive help in English, Spanish, French, and Mandarin.
