13th Street Educational Partnership

Are you an Albright student interested in volunteering at Northeast Middle School, 13th & Union, and/or 12th & Marion Elementary School? Check out the “Our Team” tab below for contacts.

Required Clearances Act 153 for all tutors:
Pennsylvania State Police Clearance
Child Abuse History Certification
FBI Fingerprint

Need Your Clearances? Send requests to:
Emma Alvarez
Human Resources Coordinator
ealvarez@albright.edu

Laern more about our partners featured here:

Some of our past successful collaborative initiatives of the 13^th Street Educational Partnership include:

• Through a Culture & Fashion project with Albright fashion majors and art students at 12^th & Marion/13th& Union, children learn about art from different cultures during lessons taught by Albright students and faculty, then create designs based on the featured culture. Albright undergraduates transform the elementary student designs into beautiful fabrics highlighted in the annual Albright Fashion Show.
• Through the ASPHALT Forest Project, an outgrowth of the STEM movement, Albright College professors have worked with the faculty at 12^th & Marion/13^th & Union to write science curriculum, hold workshops and develop an area of campus that is now being used as an environmental education center for the college and both local schools. Grants from several foundations have helped to fund this project.
• Accounting Club students from Albright volunteer during a project-based learning entrepreneurial program (TREP$), where middle schoolers at Northeast design and market unique products.
• Albright athletes from many different teams hold sports events for the schools and serve as role models to the younger students.

Our current initiatives include:

• Albright student volunteers tutor students in 3rd – 4th Grade at 12th and Marion Elementary School every Tuesday-Thursday from 3 PM to 4 PM at our “After School Adventures with Albright” program.
• The “Makin’ Beats” program, run by current Albright students majoring in Music Industry Studies, introduces the students at Northeast Middle School to music production and composition using digital audio workstations, like Ableton Live and Logic Pro
• Our Art Club at Northeast Middle School is run by Albright art majors who expose the students to a large variety of mediums while bringing the students to campus to experience professional art at our Freedman Gallery.
• Classroom Assistants who pair with teachers trained in Total Experience Learning methodology to gain 1 on 1 experience with a certified teacher and be exposed to a real classroom environment.
• Homework help clubs at Northeast and 13th & Union where our students act as tutors to engage and support students who need extra help completing and understanding their school work.
• Northeast Middle School students will be given a tour of the Albright campus to experience college life, visiting areas such as the recording studio, the TExpL building, and the cafeteria.

Even before working together under the current partnership agreement, Albright and 13th and Union had collaborated on numerous initiatives, with Albright College’s Education Department and 13^th and Union Elementary School working together since 2004. In 2012, Albright applied for a grant from the Wyomissing Foundation to extend the partnership from just the Education Department to all departments at the college. The grant was funded, and a partnership coordinator was hired in 2013. The following year, an AmeriCorps Volunteer in Service to America (VISTA) position was added, providing an opportunity to expand tutoring, mentoring, and educational programming. In the 2017-18 school year, the partnership expanded its focus to include initiatives at Northeast Middle School. In the 2023-2024 school year, we began our partnership with Total Experience Learning.

Today, more than 100 Albright student volunteers provide tutoring and mentoring at Northeast Middle School,12th and Marion Elementary School, and 13th and Union Elementary School and we are looking to keep expanding further. During the school year, more than 1,600 students at our three neighboring schools benefited from shared resources and enriching field trips to Albright’s campus.