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|  | Saturday Academy
On Friday afternoons most school buildings empty quickly and remain eerily quiet through the weekend. St. Christopher’s is the exception. Our middle school classrooms are filled with students and teachers participating in Saturday Academy, a Saturday-morning enrichment program for minority, inner-city boys with academic potential.
The program was started in 2005 by Phil Spears, Head of the Middle School, as a way to share St. Christopher’s exceptional facilities with the greater Richmond community and to give economically disadvantaged boys a shot at college. It is now coordinated by Christie Wilson, fifth grade teacher, and Edie Harper, lower school resource teacher.
Each week the participants, currently about 30 boys in grades third through sixth work closely with volunteer tutors from St. Christopher’s and St. Catherine’s to complete academic work before moving onto the gym for athletics and lunch. With volunteer teachers and upper school students from both schools returning each year to tutor and to mentor these special boys, it’s obvious that Saturday Academy is an enriching experience for all.
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"Saturday Academy is something I look forward to each year. Without sounding too lofty, we hear a lot about volunteerism, and learning the importance of giving back to the community is taught here at School from day one. On the larger national and global scale it is a way for all of us to pitch into try and make our communities and our world a better place– “those to whom much is given, much is expected” is one of those Kennedy-isms we were reminded of just recently.
"Saturday Academy is a microcosm of that. But it doesn’t get to the core of what the program is to me. It is a perfectly delightful hour of my time . Chances are I will come away having learned a math trick I wish I’d known 40 years ago! Maybe a child learns a new word or a little light goes off when you put a homework exercise in the context of their world rather than the workbook model. There is nothing like the feeling you get once you have done something for someone else – wherever you are in your life. But there is nothing quite like walking down the hall with your student of the day who has run up to you saying: 'You came back!'”
-Tressa Hamby, Development Assistant and Saturday Academy volunteer
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