How a Student Led Tutoring Program is Helping Oak Hills Students Level Up One Monday at a Time

It’s fourth period math, and you almost get it. The numbers are there. The teacher explains it again. You nod. You try the next problem, but it's wrong. Again! Suddenly you’re stuck, not because you didn’t listen, but because you don’t know where it stopped making sense. Your teacher wants to help, but you're not sure where the disconnect is.

What you do know is this: if someone just a little older, someone who learned this recently, who remembers what it felt like when it didn’t click sat down next to you, maybe it would finally make sense.That’s where Level Up Tutoring comes in.

Students Helping Students—Exactly When It Matters Most

At Baldwin County School District, we believe powerful learning doesn’t always look like a lecture. Sometimes, it looks like a cafeteria table, a pencil, and a student saying, “Let me show you how I learned this.”

Level Up Tutoring is a completely student-run tutoring program founded by Maya Puri and her best friend, Josi Scott. “We both kind of experienced that same underlying fear,” Maya explained. “Once she realized there was a gap we could fill, that was really all it took.” Maya’s sister Veera Puri—a familiar name to many in our community from the TEDx Talk Veera delivered while she was still a student at Oak Hill Middle School, quickly joined the team.

For more than a year, Maya, Veera, and their friends, Zach Ballesteros and Josi Scott, have returned to Oak Hill every Monday after school, not for credit, not for recognition, but because they remember exactly what it feels like to be there.

The Idea Started With a Feeling

Maya traces the program back to her own middle school experience, “Eighth grade was a little bit difficult for me,” she shared. “I kept thinking that if I had had somebody helping me with a lot of my work, I would have felt more confident going into high school.”

Before she even began her freshman year of high school, Maya reached out to Oak Hill with a simple question: What if students came back to help students?

What followed became Level Up Tutoring, an effort rooted in empathy and lived experience.

“I was hoping that students would not have to experience the fear of going to high school that I experienced,” Maya explained.

Why Peer-to-Peer Works

Level Up Tutoring operates through the school’s after-school YES Program, meeting Mondays from 3:45–5:00 p.m. The program is advised by Shekita Shinholster, who helped make the partnership possible and provided space for the student-led team to grow.

What makes the program especially effective is its peer-to-peer approach. Students often feel more at ease admitting confusion, and asking questions, when the person helping them remembers learning it themselves not long ago. “Peer to peer can be so important,” Maya said. “Students feel a lot more comfortable talking to someone their own age…being able to relate things back to them really helps.”

Real Impact, One Student at a Time

Since launching, Level Up Tutoring has served 91 unique students and logged more than 119 hours of tutoring, but its impact shows up most clearly in confidence gained and fear eased. “We actually had parents reach out,” Shinholster shared. “One student made great gains in math because her mother specifically wanted her to get additional support. Week after week, they worked with the same students.”

For Maya, the most meaningful moments are when the cycle completes itself. “I tutored an eighth grader who later ended up in my class as a freshman,” she said. “Seeing that come full circle, with students who aren’t as scared of that transition, it’s an incredible feeling. That’s really why I do it.”

Friendship, Leadership, and Looking Ahead

Looking forward, the students hope to keep Level Up growing.

“Expanding it to younger grades would be great,” Josi said, “so when students reach middle school, it’s not quite the struggle that we see now.”

When learning doesn’t click, and you can’t quite say why, sometimes the best solution is someone who remembers that feeling exactly.

Level Up Tutoring is proof that leadership doesn’t always come with a title. Sometimes, it comes back to the cafeteria after school, pulls up a chair, and says, “Let’s try this another way.”