My first teaching job was as an assistant in graduate school. I had been a fair undergraduate, not great, but on my first morning in graduate school, I was to stand on the other side of the desk facing a discussion section of Louisiana freshmen hoping to have a Yankee for breakfast. The night before, I studied every detail of chapter one.

My fellow graduate students hoped for these assignments because no graduate student who faced freshmen every day for two years ever flunked the program's degree-qualifying exams. The pay was not the only benefit to sitting in as a teacher.

So my wife, Carol, coached her academically fragile husband through four years of graduate school and also started an after-school program for children who needed extra help. She invited high school students to spend an after-school hour or two in her middle school library. She paid them $5 an hour to help middle schoolers with their homework. She also prepared exercises the tutors could use to help the young ones get their lessons right.

The high school principal was surprised she didn't choose his best students to do the job. Usually she took ones who were having troubles of their own but were willing (actually there was a waiting list) to learn a lesson well in order to teach younger ones for $5 an hour. Her supervision was strict, and she had to make several personnel changes.

Everybody benefited. The tutors learned, the middle school students learned, averages at both schools improved and a few went home with extra cash. By the second year, the PTA supplied the money and our budget began to recover. Learning is in the doing of the thing, and everyone is active when kids are teaching kids.

Some high school study halls use peer tutors who gain their community service credits in a subject they love. Other programs have recruited tutors from a wide range of age groups. Some schools have used tutors from grade school classes to tutor other students in the lower grades. And Canada's "Tutors in the Classroom" recruits college students for tutoring jobs in local schools around their country. TASC, The After-School Corporation (website: tascorp.org), describes a New York city program using academically advanced students in P.S. 122. The tutor's objective is to have all the students go home by 6 p.m. with homework finished.

Tutors need supervision and training in how to keep students enthusiastic and on task. Also, special materials are often necessary for the tutors to give students the practice lessons they need to keep up with their classmates. Eyeinthesky.org provides a selection of materials for tutor training.

Our counties may be short on teachers, but advanced students who are willing to tutor are plentiful.