Students for Education, a group dedicated to tutoring the less fortunate in the Indianapolis area, is scheduling the first tutoring sessions for its members this week. According to Aghilah Nadaraj, vice president and senior, this week marks the beginning of the 2011-12 tutoring year, which will continue until next April.

“We’re starting to tutor the kids down at the Coburn shelter the week of Sept. 6,” Nadaraj said. “Members will go down in small groups and work with the kids for one or two hours at a time, and each group will have different days they tutor on.”

According to sponsor Sherri Pankratz, the club’s meetings and activities are almost entirely run by students.

“I leave most of the day-to-day functions of the club to the students,” Pankratz said.

Nadaraj said the club recently had a tutoring session for new members a few weeks ago, where returning members gave new members some ideas for tutoring the younger children in particular.

“We had our training meeting last week at the library, and we helped new members develop some teaching methods,” Nadaraj said. “We talked about ways to keep the younger kids focused, teach them better reading skills and generally to keep them up on their schoolwork. We had a lot of people come to the session so it was a little hectic, but more tutors mean that the kids will get more help, which is what we’re all about.”