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Angela Sanchez starts a UCLA chapter of School on Wheels, providing tutoring for homeless K-12 students in hopes that they will attend college

Second-year history student Angela Sanchez started UCLA’s chapter of School on Wheels, a nonprofit organization that provides tutoring for homeless students. Sanchez received tutoring in calculus from School on Wheels during her last year of high school.

By Alexa Smahl

May 27, 2011 1:17 a.m.

It was an experience in high school that motivated Angela Sanchez to start the UCLA chapter of a tutoring program for homeless children.

Two years ago as a high school junior, Sanchez and her father became homeless when her father wasn’t able to find work.

Sanchez’s daily life was quickly marred by constant instability. On top of struggling to maintain her grades in Advanced Placement courses, she was suddenly faced with the uncertainty of whether or not she would have a place to sleep, or food to eat.

She and her father circulated through a string of motels before moving down to homeless shelters.

What kept Sanchez stable was her continued investment in schoolwork, she said. Come the beginning of senior year, however, she began to struggle with calculus. A member of her shelter suggested that she enroll in tutoring with School on Wheels.

School on Wheels is a nonprofit organization based out of Southern California. The program provides one-on-one tutoring for homeless children in grades K-12 by dispatching volunteers to the temporary residences of these students.

Yacine Ali-Hainouv, then a graduate student at Caltech, thought volunteering with the program would be a good way to make an impact. He became Sanchez’s tutor.

Ali-Hainouv assisted Sanchez in her work and gave much-needed support, Sanchez said. Sanchez did not tell her friends at school that she was homeless because she hoped to escape the grim reality of her predicament. Ali-Hainouv was one of her few confidants, and he helped keep Sanchez motivated and focused on her future, she said.

Sanchez said she always knew she wanted to go to college, and when admissions season rolled around, she was accepted by all of the colleges she applied to. But the decision of where to go was easy: UCLA.

After enrolling, Sanchez decided she wanted to start a School on Wheels chapter on campus. She set the plan in motion late last year, and within a couple days of the program’s establishment, she received inquiries from more than 50 interested students.

The UCLA chapter now has 33 volunteers, 15 of whom are active. Members go to shelters, libraries and other public facilities on a weekly basis to tutor homeless students. The group also encourages these students to get a college education.

“Homeless students really need help the most. … They don’t have the luxury of tutoring or (consistently) going to the same school,” said Cynthia Carvajal, UCLA School on Wheels external administrative director and a second-year political science and Chicana and Chicano studies student.

The reality is that success stories like Sanchez’s are a rarity. The Los Angeles Unified School District website shows that more than 35,000 homeless youth are currently enrolled in L.A. County schools, but very few homeless children make it to college, according to the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth.

“People from this demographic are behind (the learning curve),” said Carlos Camandang, UCLA School on Wheels administrative assistant and a second-year history student.

Every time a homeless student is relocated and enrolled in a new school, he inevitably falls behind, Camandang said.

Camandang’s student, Elisha, barely knew the alphabet by the time he was in second grade. Despite struggling academically, Camandang said Elisha does have a desire to learn.

Though he has sometimes remarked to Camandang that tutoring sessions are boring, Elisha has said he’d rather be bored than not have the sessions at all, because “getting a job is better than being homeless.”

To emphasize the importance of education, the UCLA School on Wheels tutors recently took young mentees and their families on a campus tour. They wanted to portray college as something worth striving for, Sanchez said.

“(College) becomes someplace real … more than just a pamphlet,” Sanchez said about bringing the kids to campus.

For Sanchez, the children’s predicament is all too real. Having been through the School on Wheels program, she said she knows the impact it can have. The odds of a homeless student getting into college might be slim, but, as Sanchez says, “It’s doable.”

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Alexa Smahl
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