Former foster child turns to tutoring kids like herself

Paula Carvalho grew up in Hawaii with a single mom on welfare and two half-siblings. The children's dads were out of the picture. One day, so was their mother.

Three months after meeting someone on the Internet, "my mom decided to pick up and leave. It was the day after Mother's Day," Carvalho said, her tone more ironic than bitter. "It was a nice touch."

		Grant M. Haller / P-I
	Second-grader Rosy, 8, answers a question from her tutor, Paula Carvalho, during a session in reading and math Wednesday morning at Bailey Gatzert Elementary School. Carvalho, who grew up in the foster care system, is part of a new program that helps children at four Seattle public schools who have been, or may soon be, in foster care.

Carvalho, who was then 14, and her sister and brother went into foster care. She eventually lived in two foster homes on Kauai.

With their lives and academics disrupted, foster children often graduate from high school a year or two late, if they graduate at all. Various studies indicate that fewer than 10 percent of former foster children earn bachelor's degrees.

Those dreary statistics don't apply to Carvalho, who finished high school on time in Hawaii, enrolled at Seattle University to study world history and received a dozen scholarships. She will graduate in June after four years at Seattle U, with plans to pursue a master's degree in teaching.

Last August, Seattle U hired her to tutor youths in a new summer academy run by Treehouse, a nonprofit agency that provides programs and advocacy for foster children.

Now Carvalho is part of Treehouse's tutoring corps, a new program that offers one-on-one help to children at four Seattle public schools who have been, or may soon be, in foster care.

She logs 15 hours a week at Bailey Gatzert Elementary School in the Central Area, tutoring students in reading, writing and math in Room 26, where color photos of the children -- all dubbed "Super Stars" -- adorn a bulletin board.

Some children have older siblings "going down the wrong path," said Carvalho, who turns 22 later this month and wants to be a high school history teacher someday. "They think, 'My life is going to be like that.' " She counters that "life does indeed get better," no matter one's circumstances.

"Some kids roll with the punches. Some have a harder time," she said. "I tell them, 'If you didn't have it easy, strive to make it better.' "

Jennifer Rundle, a Treehouse teacher who supervises Carvalho at Bailey Gatzert, calls the resilient tutor "a very straightforward person (who) knows what she wants and has strong opinions. She 'gets' our kids. That's the bottom line for me -- the way she talks and relates to kids."

An exchange that Carvalho said she had with an obstinate middle-school boy during the summer academy illustrates that point.

"This is stupid," the boy grumbled, balking at her help with his assignment.

"Fine," Carvalho replied. "Go find another tutor."

"But I want to work with you," the boy said after she called his bluff.

For Carvalho, reaching struggling students is not a mystery.

"You just have to find out what they like," she said. "A lot of people do not take the time to talk to them and find out what they like to do."

To relate to one student, Carvalho became a fan of Sponge Bob; to another, she tried to style her hair to mimic a girl's distinctive pompadour. When she talked with one girl about becoming a teen, she pulled out her prom photos.

"She's very mature, very practical, and a very, very hard-working person," said Merica Whitehall, assistant director of the Children's Literacy Project at Seattle U.

Carvalho and the other tutors are "all leaders, and that's not a word I take lightly," Whitehall said. "They all seem to have a very compassionate spirit."

When a student recently swiped two boxes of paper clips from her classroom and refused to return them, her teacher initially intended to ship the defiant child to the principal's office. Instead, she sent the girl with Carvalho, ostensibly to work on a writing assignment.

Alone with her tutor, the girl squirmed in her seat and eventually signaled her reluctance to write any further.

Carvalho used that moment to casually ask the girl for the paper clips. Without an argument, the child promptly emptied her pockets.

"I'm so proud of you for being honest," Carvalho told the girl before escorting her back to her classroom.

Carvalho views her accomplishments as "no big deal," Rundle said. "She does not take credit for how hard she's worked and how far she's come."

That's starting to change. Earlier this school year, Carvalho helped a kindergartener who did not yet know the alphabet by making dotted lines to spell out his name. When he connected the dots to write his name for perhaps the first time, Carvalho slipped away to the restroom, wept and told a friend what had happened in a text message.

Her friend punched out a reply: "You're going to be such a good teacher some day."