GEAR UP is seeking volunteer mentors this summer, and we would love to get you in on the action. As you may know, GEAR UP students all come from inner-city schools and mostly low income backgrounds and they attend high schools that typically do not send their graduates to college in very large numbers. GEAR UP is here to give the extra help that can change that & set these amazing students up for one of the great experiences of the world – COLLEGE. And this is where you come in.
We need you to lead our 10th and 11th grade students on campus and community adventures like the GEAR UP scavenger hunt and the Coolidge Park climbing wall each afternoon after the kids have wrapped up morning classes in a head start math program. In these activities, you would be helping these students learn how to handle and benefit from taking on new challenges, the exact skill our kids will need to master if they’re going to make it to college. Our kids can learn a lot about discipline, diligence and hard work from you, and I expect you could also show our students a lot about having fun on this campus.
If you could help us, we would need you from 11:45 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. each afternoon (not including weekends) from June 5 – 16. We will provide you lunch every day, plus a snazzy T-shirt and several chances to toss eggs in our Olympics, bend over backwards in limbo contests, rope up on the Walnut Street Bridge climbing wall and sample freely from the GEAR UP playbook. And of course, there’s the main thing – you’d be giving some hard-working underserved students a college experience that would be unforgettable & will inspire them to do the hard work it will take for them to get to and succeed in college.
So if you can help us out, please contact me at hunter-huckabay@utc.edu. In the meantime, thank you for checking this out & for whatever help you can give us on this important chance for our students. Please send questions and I hope we’ll see you on Planet GEAR UP this summer.
Hunter Huckabay, Ph.D.
Director of GEAR UP