> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.themontgomerybrief.org/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # As Demand surges, this student-led nonprofit is rallying tutors for kids in need of extra academic support - URL: https://www.themontgomerybrief.org/as-demand-surges-this-student-led-nonprofit-is-rallying-tutors-for-kids-in-need-of-extra-academic-support/ - Published: 2026-09-09T00:06:39.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-09T00:06:39.000Z - Author: Aline Barros - Tags: Education When the pandemic forced classrooms onto screens, standard online learning was not enough for some students, so a group of Montgomery County high school students took matters into their own hands. Recognizing that private tutoring was out of reach for many families, former Montgomery Blair High School student Sumin Choi founded [Stepping Stone Tutoring in 2020](https://www.steppingstonetutoring.org/?ref=themontgomerybrief.org), a student-led nonprofit, to offer free online academic support to classmates and younger peers across Montgomery County. The project is still a success. Six years later, the free, virtual tutoring program connects roughly [84 volunteer tutors](https://www.steppingstonetutoring.org/our-team?ref=themontgomerybrief.org) with more than 100 students a year, most of them in elementary school. It started with about 20 students willing to help others. Choi now attends Vanderbilt University, majoring in cell biology and genetics, but remains involved with Stepping Stone. Nina Krishnan, current president of Stepping Stone and a senior at Winston Churchill High School, told The Montgomery Brief that the program runs via Zoom, and is designed to be accessible to families who might otherwise be shut out of the private tutoring market, including immigrant and low-income households. “We offer free virtual tutoring for students of all ages, usually ranging from elementary to high school,” Krishnan said. “It’s really just for students who cannot access tutoring either because they can’t pay for it or they can’t reach a location to receive in-person tutoring.” The tutors are overwhelmingly Montgomery County Public Schools high school students. Stepping Stone sits at the intersection of children who need extra academic support and teenagers who want to serve and need Student Service Learning (SSL) hours to graduate. “There was really a lot of extra support needed for students, and they were not receiving it,” Krishnan said of the post-pandemic years. At the same time, “there’s a lot of high schoolers who need volunteer hours, who have tutoring abilities, who want to help out. So it really was a good way to just bridge the two needs that we had.” Tutors commit to at least 30 minutes a week for six weeks, though many extend their sessions or continue beyond the initial period. Subjects range depending on the students' needs. For elementary students, Krishnan said it is mostly reading and math. For middle and high school students: algebra, geometry and general core classes. “What we look for with tutors is just having the time, availability, having the personality, and just having the initiative,” Krishnan said. “You really have to want to do it and be willing to contact maybe like four or five students, and maybe you only hear back from one, but at least you're helping one person.” At the end of each semester, tutors receive SSL hours for their work. **Demand is surging** For all its growth, Stepping Stone is still run by a four-person student leadership team. “There's four of us who are kind of managing this group of tutors and training the tutors and communicating with parents,” Krishnan said. Krishnan has been with the organization for three years, starting as a tutor, then serving as director of operations, and now president. She says the biggest pressure point is simple: not enough tutors. “The highest need is definitely tutors,” she said. “We always have a very long list of students in need of tutoring.” Last year, the organization served around 114 students, and this year Krishnan is aiming to at least maintain that number and “hopefully, even double it.” But recruiting more tutors also means more work behind the scenes: more emails, more match-making between students and tutors, and more coordination with families. At times, Krishnan said, she has been recruiting new officers while simultaneously managing an inbox with emails from parents, students and tutors. “It’s definitely a growing program,” she said. “When I came around to Stepping Stone, it wasn’t as big of a program, and now it’s just getting bigger. I think we could use more officers, not just more tutors.” **Linguistic diversity** One of Stepping Stone’s strengths is linguistic diversity. Many of the tutors are bilingual or multilingual, a critical asset in a county where nearly one in three residents is foreign-born. “Just looking at the document, we've had Russian, French, Spanish, Telugu, Urdu, Hindi, ASL, Amharic... Tamil,” Krishnan said, reading from the program’s internal list. “These tutors are fluent in that language, and they have listed it as something they are comfortable tutoring with.” That matters for students and for parents who are trying to navigate school in a new country. “We get a lot of responses who write that they need it to be in Spanish, and we definitely get a lot of tutors who are willing to do their sessions in Spanish,” Krishnan said. “It’s really cool to see.” She described cases where the program has located tutors in less commonly taught languages, including Farsi, and even found people able to help with post-high school coursework. “I would just tell the parents it’s worthwhile to sign your kid up,” she said. “I can’t say that we can match you immediately because of how much of a high demand we have, but… nothing is impossible to find a tutor for. There definitely is someone out there who can help them.” **Positive feedback** Krishnan said the feedback that comes from parents shows families that feel they have finally found an accessible, culturally responsive support system for their children. “I've had parents say that this is the first time their kids have been excited about school, that they couldn't find anyone who could help their kid until now,” she said. “The parents are kind of a mix of relieved and happy because they've finally found something that can support their needs.” The transformation is not just academic. “In my own experience of doing Zoom calls with students and seeing how their own attitudes have changed throughout, it's just really cool to see how we can have that kind of impact on people and change their whole outlook on education and how they can do in school,” she added. Part of that shift, she believes, comes from the peer-like relationship between tutor and student. “As a tutor, you realize that you can really connect with this student,” she said. “You might be the same age as them, or maybe they're a little bit younger or a little bit older, but you can really connect with them even beyond education.” Tutors sometimes request to keep working with the same student year after year. “They want to be matched with the same person because they know them and they have a relationship with them,” she said. Krishnan also believes Stepping Stone is a blueprint for the kind of work she wants to continue. “I wanted to be president because I had all the different experiences of first being a tutor and then… kind of managing,” she said. “I saw what this organization needed, and I felt like I had the experience to maybe take it to where it needed to be in terms of increasing marketing and outreach.” The experience has shaped how she thinks about service and her own future. “This experience just showed me how valuable it is to volunteer,” she said. “In the future, I definitely want to participate in an organization like this one, or even start one at the university I end up at… Counties all over the world could use a program like this.” Krishnan is currently applying to college, planning to major in neuroscience on the pre-med track. She says she plans to keep tutoring, even if it’s just 30 minutes a week.