Students, Seniors Connect at Tech Tutoring Events in Wyoming

On the morning of April 15, a group of 10 student council members from Lingle-Fort Laramie, a high school of less than 100 students roughly 20 miles from the Nebraska border, walked six blocks to have lunch with a group of 40 clients at the Lingle Friendship Center.

The student council spent their lunch hour at the Friendship Center in Lingle offering their version of tech savvy in the form of one-on-one tutoring sessions on all things smartphone and tablet. In all, the student council from Lingle-Fort Laramie held tech tutoring sessions last month  in three different Goshen County communities, with students performing around 100 individual tutoring sessions.

“I think some of the kids liked it because they are experts in the area and it was a role reversal for someone who was 14 years old to feel like they have something to impart,” says Erin Estes, sponsor of the Lingle-Fort Laramie High School Student Council.

The program was a joint venture between AARP Wyoming, Lingle-Fort Laramie High School, and the Torrington Friendship Center. The idea was the brainchild of AARP Wyoming Executive Council Member Bill Marsh, while the Lingle-Fort Laramie Student Council and Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) took the ball and ran with it. The FBLA chapter sent out around 100 surveys to clients of the senior centers, which changed the program’s aim dramatically.

“We had planned to do classes on Facebook, and Facetime and other apps, but when we received the surveys, we found people really just wanted short, troubleshooting sessions,” Estes says.

“The help people were asking for was more basic than we had anticipated. I think that made it so much easier to implement. “

Estes says after the first tech session in Lingle, there was a buzz for the students’ second tech session scheduled for May 7 and 8 at Torrington’s Friendship Center, 10 miles east of Lingle. In each case, the student council sat down for lunch with the clients of the Senior Centers prior to the tech session. Estes says in retrospect, that aspect of the event was key to its success.

“It wasn’t like we were just coming to help, we were spending time with them and taking the time to learn more about them and their experiences. It made tutoring with them easier. I think that is one thing that made ours successful.”