ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – School being back in session means students are adjusting their routines, and often those routines include homework.
Getting it all done can be a challenge, especially for parents with busy schedules. That's why the Orange County Library System offers free homework help, including live, online tutors through Brainfuse.
The library's Youth Services manager, Bethany Stone, said this is a resource a lot of families don't know about.
"Every day we hear, 'I never knew you guys did this. I never knew you guys offered this,'" she said.
The online tutors are available between 2 and 11 p.m., and tutors are available in both English and Spanish. Tutors can assist students in kindergarten all the way through college. Stone said demand for tutors has increased, especially since most schools teach a little differently than they did 20 years ago.
"You can find the right answer. You can help your daughter get the right answer, but they are teaching math different. They're teaching things a little differently, so we need to be able to show our kids how to get the right answer," Stone said.
To find a tutor, head to library's homework help page. From there, you can browse by subject. Enter your child's grade and the specific class in which they need help. Stone said every tutor is a trained educator or trained tutor.
"They know how to work with kids, how to handle frustration and kind of calm them down maybe in a way that's harder for moms and dads to do sometimes when they're frustrated as well," Stone said.
The site also offers writing help. A tutor can help students make an outline for a research paper.
"They won't write if for you, but they might say, 'Hey, you need to support this argument a little more' or help with grammar and punctuation. That sort of thing," she said.
The homework help site is free with an Orange County library card. All Orange County Public Schools students have a virtual library card, which is their student ID number and birth date. Stone estimates about 500 students monthly access the site.