Tutoring Kids Academic for Star Student

Jeff Hsu was looking for something to do last summer and signed up to tutor children at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Woodland Hills. His assignment was to help two visiting Korean children--ages 12 and 6--learn to read.

Jeff, 17, walked the older girl around the hospital teaching her common words such as “door” and “bathroom” and used a teen magazine as a reading primer.

“We tried to make it a fun experience,” Jeff said recently.

He enjoyed it so much that he continues to tutor for Kaiser’s Skills Enhancement Program during the school year. He volunteers two to three hours after school each week to teach a 10-year-old boy, who is proficient only in Hebrew, to read English.

“I like teaching kids. I’ll just stay up an hour later on those nights,” said Jeff, who is a senior with a full load of advanced placement classes at Chaminade College Preparatory School in West Hills.

Jeff received a perfect 1600 on his SAT and is Chaminade’s senior class president. He plans to study biomedical engineering at MIT, Stanford, Caltech or Johns Hopkins University. He was recently named a 2001 National Merit Scholarship semifinalist.

“[Tutoring] just gives me something to do with my time,” Jeff said. “I look forward to it. It helps me take the stress off my own academics.”

At any time, about 25 tutors in the Kaiser program are teaching adults and children how to master English, said Ethel Klein, 77, a volunteer who helped establish the program in 1993.

Jeff has been working with fifth-grader Victor Azal of Agoura Hills for two weeks.

Victor was born at the hospital where he is now being tutored, but his parents moved with their five children to Israel when Victor was 5. They returned to the Valley about a month ago.

“We wanted our children to know their roots,” said Tina Azal, 44. “We wanted them to understand their native language.”

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For Victor’s younger and older siblings, the five-year stay in Israel had little effect on their English. The older ones, who are 21, 17 and 15, grew up in the Valley. His younger sister, 4-year-old Daniella, is just starting to learn to read.

But Victor was nearing elementary school age when the family moved, and it set him back. His mother said he is doing well in math at Sumac Elementary in Agoura Hills, but he struggles in other areas. She discovered the Kaiser program in a local newspaper.

Victor and Jeff sound out words phonetically. Jeff said he has already seen some improvement, and Victor said he did well on a recent spelling test at school.

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