Adults and elementary students are sitting at card tables and chairs arranged in neat, widely spaced rows in Drew Hall on this Wednesday afternoon after school. The kids are reading or working on exercises to improve comprehension, and the adults, their tutors, are helping them.

Thus begins another tutoring session for 20-25 students from West Middle Elementary School in a program sponsored by ConnectiKids at Asylum Hill Congregational Church. The goal is simple. Listen to Alisha Johnson, 9, a third grader at West Middle, “Because it helps me learn better,” says Alisha, now in her third year of the program.

ConnectiKids was started in 1978 by AHCC members as a tutoring program for West Middle students. It has since added elementary students from M.D. Fox once a week. More than 250 students are tutored at AHCC and six other sites in Hartford by a volunteer force of parents, business and state workers, teenagers and senior citizens. At the church on Wednesdays adults tutor third graders in Drew Hall, while high school students from Avon and Hartford Public High School tutor second graders in the Twichell Room.

ConnectiKids, Inc. is an independent, non-profit youth development agency which began in 1978 when volunteers from Asylum Hill Congregational Church and corporations located on "The Hill" got together to provide occasional after-school tutoring sessions for elementary school students from West Middle School, a public elementary school in the neighborhood.

The mission of ConnectiKids is to connect Hartford children and youth to their potential by building relationships and providing educational opportunities. ConnectiKids offers a Tutoring/Mentoring Program, Arts and Enrichment Program and a Summer Program to elementary school children from West Middle and M.D. Fox Elementary Schools, and an Alumni Program for middle and high school students who have graduated out of the elementary program.

Click here for more information on ConnectiKids