Hillsborough Students Are Helping To Buy Books For Disadvantaged Kids Through Tutoring

HILLSBOROUGH, NJ — As the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic took shape in 2020, Hillsborough High School junior Hailey Desai and Princeton Day School junior Maya Sethuraman came up with an idea to offer tutoring to help local students.

Now three years later their tutoring has evolved into an organization, called Tutoring for Textbooks, dedicated to raising money to help disadvantaged students in India gain access to educational materials.

The idea for tutoring was spurred when Sethuraman and her classmate, Desai, learned that many elementary school students were struggling with virtual classes.

They posted on Facebook offering their tutoring help and got a great response.

"We started tutoring elementary students in our neighboring communities one-on-one, helping them improve their reading comprehension and math skills," said Sethuraman.

"Parents were grateful for the one-on-one support," said Sethuraman.

Through tutoring, Desai said she could "see how virtual learning affected students and created gaps in education."

Both Sethuraman and Desai adapted to each child's needs and found creative ways to help students learn.

"I appreciate my teacher a lot more after doing this," said Sethuraman.

Since they received a great response and students seemed to be benefitting, they decided to start Tutoring for Textbooks.

In the past 2.5 years, they have raised more than $1,000 by tutoring for over 150 hours to help address education inequalities and found that tutoring students in the community are an effective way of helping them receive one-on-one tutoring and connect with an older student.

Tutoring for Textbooks offers tutoring for grades 1-5 in math, and grades 6-7 on basic algebra concepts. They also tutor grades 1-7 in reading/writing.

To learn more about Tutoring For Textbooks, request tutoring help, donate, or volunteer visit tutoringfortextboo.wixsite.com/tutoringfortextbooks or email tutoringfortextbooks@gmail.com or follow instagram.com/tutoringfortextbooks.

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