Before and after school, classrooms are overflowing with students vying for the teachers’ attention, and hoping to grasp onto bits and pieces of concepts that have already been reviewed for hours on end.

Senior Noah Corbitt and junior Brandon Su have created an alternative.

Corbitt and Su created the Leopard Tutoring Club, a peer-to-peer learning environment where students can get tutoring in subjects they’re struggling in.

“The purpose of the club is to provide students with the opportunity to help their community by tutoring their peers and also to give a safe learning environment to students in need of academic help outside of normal tutoring hours of teachers,” Su said.

Along with helping those in need, the club also provides NHS members with opportunities to earn service hours.

“I know a lot of people are in NHS and they’re looking for opportunities to help their community and earn those service hours that NHS requires,” Su said. “I’ve noticed that some people are struggling in classes, and they might not be as comfortable as getting tutoring from teachers, and maybe they would learn more if it came from a peer.”

Junior Mandy Rickett, an NHS member and tutor, said she loves the opportunity the club gives to both the student-teachers, and those who need tutoring.

“I thought it was a really good idea just because it gives an opportunity for students to teach, which when you teach something that’s when you know it,” Rickett said. “So it helps the teacher as well know their subject really well and then it also gives elementary school kids or high school kids an opportunity to know their subject they’re struggling with a lot better, especially like when teachers can’t go to tutoring.”

Both Corbitt and Su agree that even if a student is passing a class, some probably aren’t fully grasping the concepts and feel like they’re drowning in their studies. Corbitt said that because teachers aren’t the same age as their students, they don’t have the same mindset and perspective, so getting others students to teach in a way that makes sense to their peers is very beneficial.

“If we provide people with perspectives closer to their own age groups and go through the stuff with them, that means that it will probably give them a perspective that they’re not currently getting in the classroom, and hopefully it will help them,” Corbitt said.

Su said their club is already filled with great student-tutors who are very knowledgeable and eager to help.

“In the fews weeks that we’ve started, we’ve gathered a lot of tutors already,” Su said. “These tutors are AP students- they’ve taken a bunch of AP courses and things like that in their time at Lovejoy, and they’re fully ready to teach.”

Su and Corbitt have created this club to be flexible because they know firsthand how busy students can be.

“We can customize our tutoring schedule to whenever the student’s needs, so they can just contact me and we can arrange a time, any time that they’re free,” Su said. “We can customize the meeting location. It’s not really set for the library. It’s just anywhere convenient and possible.”

Librarian and Leopard Tutoring Club sponsor Emma McDonald said she loved the idea of the club.

“I thought the idea was fabulous,” McDonald said. “I love the idea of students helping other students to learn the information in class because often they’re better able to sometimes explain it so that someone else can understand it. The library is all about access and access to learning and helping people to learn, so I felt like it was a natural fit. They wanted some place for the students to be able to meet to tutor, and again, I felt the library was a perfect fit for that.”

The main goal that Corbitt and Su had in mind when creating this club was to provide students with opportunities to ask questions and learn one-on-one with others who share a similar mindset.

“This provides a place where people can actually ask those questions and allow themselves to understand,” Corbitt said. “So it does feel really good if that’s the impact.”