Homework help available at library
By Melissa Muntz Community Reporter

Shrewsbury - What are parents to do when, at 7 p.m., their high school student comes to them with a question about their advanced placement physics homework?

If you're a physicist, you should have no problem. But for everyone else, help is just a few keystrokes away.

The Shrewsbury Public Library off ers Live Homework Help, where students from the fourth grade through early college can get realtime help from certified tutors at no cost.

Using their library card number, students can sign into the program every day from 4 to 10 p.m. and begin chatting with a tutor, maybe a teacher, a graduate student or a librarian, who can offer assistance with English, math, science or social studies homework.

"We've had a great response from students and parents, especially when talking about science and math," Library Director Ellen Dolan said. "A lot of people struggle with those and find it difficult to provide help to their kids."

In addition to the live chat, the program also has a wipe board feature that allows the tutor to work through a problem with the student. Although they give the students step-by-step instructions, Dolan said the tutors make sure the child is the one actually performing the work.

"They do a very good job of not answering the questions but rather walking them through the answer so that students can do similar problems in the future on their own," she said.

The homework help program offers unlimited assistance to students for a flat fee, which the library pays, of $6,000 per year. Dolan said she purchased the program over a year ago as she saw students beginning to lose valuable resources due to budget cuts in the School Department.

"The schools have lost their media specialists and we knew students would need additional support," Dolan said, "and this allows us to off er that without creating additional services in the library itself."

Dolan has had training sessions with teachers and principals to increase their awareness about the program, which they can off er to students they think may need additional assistance.

Anyone who would like to be able to access the help line but doesn't have the necessary library card can visit the library to obtain a card.

Each person's first library card comes at no cost, but students need a parent or piece of identification with their name and address on it to open an account. Those who have lost a card can purchase a replacement for $2.