Gary Kosman

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2003

Gary Kosman

America Learns

http://www.americalearns.net

Los Angeles, California, United States

Education & Youth Leadership

The Bold Idea:

Increasing the quality and lowering the cost of effective tutoring through a web-based professional development and reporting service.

America Learns works with tutoring, mentoring and teacher education programs reaching 20,000 students worldwide. Organizations use their Web-based service to ensure that their educators (tutors, pre-service teachers, mentors) have the skills and knowledge needed for success while reducing the amount of time and money spent on reporting, performance measurement, and evaluation.

Biography:

While volunteering as a reading tutor one day in 1997, Gary's student, Monique, brought homework to the tutoring session that asked her to underline the predicates of several sentences. Gary, nor any other tutor, student or supervisor knew what predicates were. Unable to find a dictionary or other reference, Gary sent Monique home with incomplete work. Monique's family was unable to help her that night, and she arrived at school the following day with incomplete homework.

After learning from his tutoring colleagues that they also had periodic challenges helping students grasp language arts and mathematics concepts, and then conducting extensive research of tutoring and tutor training programs across the United States, Gary dedicated himself to improving the practices of tutoring and academic mentoring. "If we're going to tell our communities' most marginalized children that we're going to provide them with supplemental help," Gary often says, "we need to do whatever it takes to ensure that help is of the highest quality."

Gary has been involved in multiple facets of the education sector, from serving on the evaluation team for the City of Los Angeles’ LA’s BEST after-school program to co-authoring guidelines for the U.S. Navy and Marines' advanced distance learning program. Prior to that work, Gary co-produced a parent involvement plan for the Jennings School District in Missouri and played substantial roles organizing and implementing the City of St. Louis’ revamped Head Start program.

In 1998, Gary served as the Boston Private Industry Council’s Interim School-Business Partnership Manager (successfully recruiting businesses to wire Boston schools to the Internet) and co-authored A Compact for Reading – a guidebook that provides strategies to help parents, educators, and community members develop effective, workable partnerships. He has also worked with The Buckley School, Children's Math Worlds, The Los Angeles Times’ "Reading by 9" initiative and the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Gary graduated summa cum laude from Northwestern University with a degree in Education and Social Policy, served as a Johnson Foundation Wingspread Fellow, a Coro Fellow, and received an Echoing Green Fellowship to continue developing and implementing America Learns. Gary coaches children in football, basketball and baseball in his spare time.