Children get a scream out of Penntoring

No, that wasn't Neve Campbell you heard screaming on the second floor of Houston Hall yesterday afternoon. The yells were coming from the mouths of young children as they explored the Smith-Penniman Room in Houston Hall, which had been transformed into a spooky haunted house by members of the Kite and Key Society's Penntoring program. Penntoring is a weekly mentoring and tutoring program that brings West Philadelphia grade school children to campus. During the sessions, University students teach the children for an hour and then play various games and activities. In celebration of Halloween, the program turned the usual staid Smith-Penniman Room into a cauldron of ghosts and ghouls. "Last week, something strange happened," Brian Goldberg read from a letter he told the kids he received from the Houston Hall management. Goldberg, a community projects coordinator for Kite and Key decked out in black garb and ghastly face paint, told the enthralled and frightened children that the room was now haunted. About 10 students and their mentors went into the room at a time. In the room, they crawled through a "spider's tunnel," looked behind blinds to find Penn students squirting "silly string" and reached into boxes allegedly filled with candy, only discover a human head. "It was really scary," said 10-year-old Amber Ligon as she emerged from the haunted room. Penntoring, jointly run by Kite and Key and the Philadelphia Department of Human Services, is distinct from other tutoring programs, according to Goldberg, a College junior. The children come to campus instead of Penn students traveling to them, and about one-third of each 90-minute session is spent playing games and engaging in other non-academic pursuits. In the past, the group has organized a scavenger hunt and Olympic-style sports. "The activities make this program different from others," Goldberg said. "Mentors and their kids become quite attached." College senior Debra Drummond, now in her third semester with the program and her second semester with the same mentee, added that "it allows us to get on a personal level with the students." Having the children come to campus is an advantage for everyone, said social worker Toni Moody, who coordinates the Human Services side of the program. "[The children] get to see the importance of going to school and furthering their education," Moody said. Goldberg also noted that the program appeals to Penn students because they don't have to travel any further than Houston Hall. Penntoring is also popular because of the individual attention the mentors can give to the kids, according to Moody. Each Penn student is paired with only one younger child and stays with that student for the entire semester. That might change next year, however, when the closing of Houston Hall for renovations will force the program to find a new home. Currently, Penntoring uses five rooms on Houston Hall's second floor each Thursday afternoon. If the program is consolidated into smaller quarters, several children likely will have to pair up with a single mentor, reducing the opportunities for one-on-one interaction, Goldberg said. "I'm not going to get frantic until I know more details," he added. "But I am worried. Where are we going to find five or six rooms close to each other?"

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