While teaching at Hardy Elementary School, Brittany Harris and Colleen Ryan realized that many of their students’ parents were unable to visit the school, either due to a lack of transportation or other obligations. So the two teachers decided to bring the school to them.
In April 2016, Harris and Ryan bought an old mini school bus with their own money and transformed the interior into a mobile classroom.
The Passage, as it’s called, officially began making rounds in November 2016.
Harris and Ryan drive the bus to students’ homes and offer 30-minute sessions once a week for four weeks. In that time, they work with both students and their parents to build a notebook full of strategies, games and resources the parents can then use to help their students study.
One of the goals of The Passage is to empower parents to help their children, “because parents are the first teachers of their children,” said Ryan.