Free tutoring
Calgary woman offers help to kids all over the world
CALGARY — Haider Nakukara misses going to school.
He’s nine years old and, of course, he misses seeing his friends every day and learning from his teachers in a classroom.
The COVID-19 pandemic has meant his learning has to happen at home — and that’s just not quite as much fun as going to school every day.
Fortunately for Nakukara, he’s got Sara Herlevsen in his corner.
Soon after the novel coronavirus started spreading and most people were sent home in Alberta, the 31-year-old massage therapist decided to send out a message on Facebook to let people know she’d be volunteering to tutor any kids who needed help.
Nakukara’s parents responded, and now he’s working with Herlevsen on just about every subject he’d normally be studying in school.
It has been, in his own words, awesome.
“She’s amazing,” Nakukara said. “She’s helping me to stay (educated) while I’m at home.
“She’s so nice, she’s funny and she always has a positive attitude about what I say and ask her to do.”
Ever since she put out that pivotal Facebook post offering her tutoring services for free, Herlevsen has been busy. Really busy.
Parents contacted her from as far away as the United Kingdom and Australia. She’s helping more than 150 kids and starts video-chatting with the young students she’s tutoring at 6 a.m. on most mornings. Her schedule usually doesn’t slow down until mid-afternoon.
It’s all free, too. That needs to be emphasized. Herlevsen is just trying to help in whatever way she can in the midst of a global pandemic that is disrupting so many lives. Herlevsen has ADHD, and wanted to make sure she offered her services to parents of kids who also had ADHD to see if she could help make learning from home a little bit easier.
“I’m finding that with being stuck home and particularly with ADHD, those kids (sometimes) only want to do what they want to do,” Herlevsen said. “There’s a lot of pressure and tension in the world and they’re not really in the zone for the curriculum, exactly. So I take parts of the curriculum and try to apply it case-bycase.”