The David Jimenez Learning Center began as an Afterschool Helping with Homework. However, noticing the poor quality of homework assignments in the public school we changed our program into a Learning Center. We renamed it the David Jimenez Learning Center to honor the beloved young teacher so involved with us along the way who we lost to COVID. His spirit can live on with us in this vibrant program, now with 9 teachers, a coordinator, and around 90 students each year. The 9 teachers have classes limited to 10 students. Although they do help with homework, they evaluate the students at the beginning of the year to identify weaknesses and work towards eliminating those weaknesses so that each child achieves his grade level competencies by the end of the year. In addition, the Learning Center provides enrichment experiences which the public school system is not able to provide. There are visits by poets, clowns, and musicians. The children perform drama for their parents. 

 

We have huge parental support. The parents recognize the true learning that is going on in their children's daily two-hour class. Certainly much of the results stems from the small class size of 10 students, but the teachers also work as a team with the coordinator seeking strategies to help students who are having difficulty in learning.