Category: Tutor Stories

Saga Education sat down with Lindsay Lopez, an AmeriCorps member in Broward County (FL), to talk about what it's really like to serve with Saga.

As a Saga Fellow, we go through an extensive training program focused on the best ways to teach and build relationships with our students. What I didn’t expect was that I would learn four key life lessons from them.

Coming from a home where education was a top priority, Kaila Epps set her goals toward college at an early age. She originally wanted to pursue medical school, but what began as an initial gap year of service changed the course of her professional career forever.

For our first segment of this series, we focused on Fellows that chose to take a break between their undergraduate and graduate studies. Known as a gap year, this space has allowed for Fellows like Jourdan Vann and Elizabeth Garcia to train and develop important teaching skills, build personal connections, and gain insight into themselves—and the communities they serve—through the shared experience of tutoring in underserved schools.

Are you still unsure about taking a gap year? Hear from one of our current Saga Tutoring Fellows about why taking a gap year was the best decision for him. A native New Yorker, Mark Cort knew that he wanted to give back to the community similar to those in which he was raised before dedicating his time to himself and to medical school. His desire to work in education and in a school setting motivated him to join Saga as a Tutoring Fellow this school year.

Karlyn served as a Fellow at Harlan Community Academy in Chicago, IL during the 2014-2015 school year. Karlyn’s life after her service year has been rather unique! Read on to learn how she has ultimately arrived at being awarded one of the University of Chicago‘s prestigious Institute of Education Sciences Fellowships towards obtaining her Ph.D.