Eagle Foundation expands education opportunities with grant
The Eagle Foundation, a local nonprofit focused on providing specialized mentoring and tutoring to students, received a $39,500 VIP grant from the SHARE Foundation in January.
Progress 2022
The organization’s director of education programs, Julie Aldredge, said that The Eagle Foundation uses the funding to boost their services, scholarship opportunities and staff.
“We use the money in three specific ways. The first way is that we provide skilled intervention for students with dyslexia such as training teaching mentors and materials. The second way is that we provide scholarships for families who can’t afford full-price tuition. The third way is that we build capacity through the expansion of our team,” she said. “We just hired our assistant director in January which has made my life a lot easier. We’ve grown so fast so it was awesome [the funding] came around at exactly the right time.”
The Foundation’s Eagle Learning Center opened its doors in 2019 and provides a home base for the organization to provide its services of pinpointing students needs and providing mentors and educational opportunities to help them.
“I like to describe our services as an educational buffet. When students and families walk through the doors and have their initial interview, we sit down and decide why are [they] here,” Aldredge said. “Sometimes it’s behavioral or responsibility issues, such as finishing and turning in work. And that can have so many layers to it — from anxiety and depression, rebellion — there’s a lot of reasons.”
She went on to say that pinpointing a student’s specific needs allows the use of specialized services catered to provide exactly what will help them succeed.
“Sometimes that need is they want college but can’t get in where [they] want to go and need to raise their ACT score, so we provide a mentor for ACT prep. Sometimes they walk in and they are so far below reading at grade level, that we screen them and determine if they need one-on-one help and need a boost. They might have markers for dyslexia and we can screen for markers of it,” Aldredge said.
“We’re really trying to get to the whole child and fill in the gaps and let them be the human being God created them to be, that’s why we’re a ‘buffet.’ We don’t provide exact same service for anybody who walks through the door,” she continued.
The organization has in its roster approximately 20 mentors, according to Aldredge, ranging from high-school aged tutors to professional academic specialists. Mentors function within that same range, with some simply spending time with or tutoring students to help them catch up from missed classes while others focus on more challenging areas of need.
“We have everywhere from [peer tutors] to… a reading specialist who is also a screener for dyslexia and a certified academic language therapist through an organization in Texas that trains people with Bachelor’s degrees to become dyslexia interventionists,” Aldredge said.
Aldredge estimated that around 50% of the Learning Center’s students are on some level of scholarship, which is funded in part through SHARE VIP funding.
Aldredge also touted the community benefits of the Learning Center.
“I think that I speak for our organization that when the children of our community are healthy and successful… they grow up and make sure they have children who are healthy, successful and whole as well,” she said.
The organization also offers training opportunities for educators and
prospective mentors.
A two week long training called Take Flight: a Comprehensive Intervention for Students with Dyslexia - developed by Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children will take place from June 27 until July 9. The training is open to educators or anyone with a bachelor’s degree. The training will be “in El Dorado under McKinney Christian Academy’s Multi-sensory Teacher Training program and led by Peggy Brooks, a Certified Academic Language Therapist (CALT) and Qualified Instructor (QI) who lives in El Dorado and works with The EAGLE Foundation,” according to a release from the organization.
Deadline for registration for this training is March 30; anyone interested should contact Julie Aldredge at 870-312-6174 or Julie@EagleArkansas. org.
The Eagle Foundation Learning Center is located at 411 N. Murphy Ave.