Parents ‘blessed’ by Ms. Sealy’s homework club
According to the mothers in Glendower, Cyleta Gibson-Sealy is their children’s ticket out of poverty. She runs a modest homework club on the ground floor of a 12-storey community housing building at the corner of Finch Ave. E. and Birchmount Rd.
Today, 17 students aged 4 to 14 showed up after school. They’ve done their school homework, written in their journals, had a snack of cheese and crackers, received a lesson on the recent federal election and a few, such as Irene Kamau’s son, Graham, executed complicated math formulas on the blackboard that spans one wall.
“He’s done Grade 6 work, and he’s in Grade 4. I take no credit for it. When he came here, he couldn’t hold a pen. It’s all her,” says Kamau, looking over at Gibson-Sealy, who is overseeing 5-year-old Eliai read Come Back, Amelia Bedelia aloud. (That book is too difficult for my 7-year-old son, I judged.)
Linda Obinim’s four children are being tutored for free by Gibson-Sealy. That means they aren’t loitering outside, where they’d likely run smack into trouble, she says. “We are so blessed.” That’s not a common refrain you hear in community housing high ris- es. But Gibson-Sealy is far from common. She’s one of those special people who transform streets into communities.
In the summer, she runs the local baseball and soccer camps. She started a parents’ club. She sits on the community police liaison committee — a move, she says, that was also inspired by the United Way, but we’ll get to that later.
Gibson-Sealy started her homework club by accident more than a decade ago. She was sitting outside her family’s townhome after dinner, enjoying the summer warmth and her novel, when some local kids stopped to ask what she was reading. So she lumbered inside and dug into her children’s supply of books. Armed with Dr. Seuss, she began reading to them.
“Then, one or two said they were struggling with their homework, so I helped them,” says Gibson-Sealy, a 54-year-old grandmother who works in a local school lunch program.
She moved some chairs down into her basement where they could all work together after school. Soon there were more than a dozen kids crowding in. She asked Toronto Community Housing staff for space in this highrise, a short walk away, and they offered her a three-room unit and threw in $500 for supplies.
Since then, up to 30 students come here every school day afternoon to work with Ms. Sealy for three hours for free. She serves up lessons on leadership and respect, too. She calls her program Beyond Academics.
“A lot of it comes from workshops I attended through the Action for Neighbourhood Change and the United Way,” says Gibson-Sealy.
United Way launched their Action for Neighbourhood Change program in Steeles-L’Amoreaux nine years ago, after the area was declared a priority neighbourhood by the city. Instead of enforcing ideas, its staff listened to residents and helped them set their own development goals, Gibson-Sealy says. “They have a passion to really help, not dictate. They showed the residents how empowered they can be,” she says.
In 2009, the United Way launched the Community Builders’ Exchange program, bringing together community leaders from its neighbourhood committees across the city each month to share ideas and receive the training they needed to execute their plans. So far, more than 2,000 Toronto residents have gone to workshops on everything from leadership development to problem solving. The program costs $10,000 annually.
Gibson-Sealy took a six-day community development course and a grant-writing course, which she used to write a pitch for a local parents’ club. (She won a $5,000 residents action grant from the United Way.) She’s learned how to network, mediate conflicts and facilitate workshops, which she has started giving at United Way miniconferences.
Also, through the program, she’s made some valuable connections, including the members of a local church congregation who regularly donate kids’ knapsacks, books, school supplies and fresh bread. “It became so much easier when I didn’t have to scramble to get the things I need,” says Gibson-Sealy.