With the continued growth of Navegadores Escolares, MFEE recognized that Montclair's multilingual students needed additional support after school. Entrenadores Escolares provides after school bilingual tutoring and social support to multilingual middle and high school students. 

 

Meeting three times a week near Walnut Street train station at a location provided by a generous donor, ELL students are paired with Montclair High School teen volunteers. “Entrenadores” means coaches, and the MHS teen mentors help with homework, provide extra tutoring, and overall build friendships and relationships among all the students.

 

Some students have recently immigrated to the US and have experienced learning gaps because COVID shut down their schools in their home countries, and they did not have the opportunity to have remote learning. Others have had challenging journeys which impacted their learning. And still others have strong academic backgrounds, but the language barriers make it hard to access the material. Multi Language learners take their core content classes like math and science with teachers who only speak English and work with English-only textbooks, so these bilingual teen mentors provide a valuable resource.

 

Entrenadores Escolares also provides enrichment activities like visits to the Bronx Zoo and the Museum of Natural History.  Additionally, Entrenadores Escolares is serving as a field study program for MSU Cali School of Music - Music Therapy. Under the guidance of MSU professor Michael Viega,  MSU undergraduate and graduate students are leading a year-long program to use music as a tool for supporting the social/emotional health of teens. They meet weekly with teens to explore beat-making, songwriting, composition, and instrumental music. The magical connections and healing that is already happening is inspiring.