By Jacob Palmer

Sponsored by Swetland Cook PLLC

The Leap Frog Program is an after-school tutoring and mentoring program that serves students first through third-grade from the Oxford City and Lafayette County public school systems throughout the academic year. Leap Frog offers reading intervention services to students who are at-risk for falling behind academically free of charge.

“Because of the pandemic, we have opted into an all virtual tutoring program. We have paired students with tutors to work via Zoom or Facetime. We provide tutors with training, online materials and resources. So far this semester our tutors have logged over 130 hours, read over 38 hours/75 books virtually with their students,” said Teresa Adams, Executive Director of the Leap Frog Program.

“We consider this a huge success as we are all learning this new way of communication and e-learning. In addition to virtual tutoring, we host “Open Saturdays” once a month. Students and their families are able to sign up for time slots to come to pick up supplies, Traveling Trunk art supply bags, and return and check out books from our library. Even in these strange and uncertain times, we wanted to be able to still reach out to our students. We are very proud of how our program has adapted.”

“Our students bring such joy and life into the program. It has proven to not only be a huge benefit to the students but also to the volunteers who serve with us. The students and volunteers create such meaningful relationships that can often last for years. The volunteers are such a large part of the success of the program. Without our volunteers, we would not be able to serve these students,” said Adams.

Leap Frog offers its services free of charge to participating families. Donations made to Leap Frog help supply books, educational materials, student support services and programming costs.

For more information, visit https://theleapfrogprogram.org/.