CollegeTrack

CollegeTrack encourages each child at the Wooten Center to attend college by empowering students and parents to take charge of college planning. Students visit local universities, attend practical college-admissions workshops, meet with current college students, receive guidance on choosing proper classes during middle and high school, and prepare for college prep testing. Parents also receive guidance so that they can more effectively support their children’s educational efforts. Our CollegeTrack director works individually with each youth to ensure that students take the required high school classes, required college entrance exams and properly fill out their college, scholarship and financial aid applications. This program is generously funded through the James Irvine Foundation, Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation, Lon V. Smith Foundation, Best Buy Children’s Foundation, and the LA Times Holiday Fund.

Tutorial Program

The Wooten Center has a comprehensive tutoring program. The Tutorial Program is supervised by a qualified instructor and taught by trained tutors. Tutors identify children with reading, writing and math skills below grade level and work to bring them up to grade level or above.

Computer Lab

An essential program at the Wooten Center is our Computer Lab. Children receive daily instruction in software programs, Internet and e-mail use, typing techniques and homework assistance. Youth leave the Wooten Center Microsoft Office proficient with advanced typing skills.

Ella Fitzgerald Library

The Wooten Center’s Ella Fitzgerald Library provides academic, reference and pleasure-reading materials for our children and their families. Wooten youth have helped build, stock, organize and maintain the library and its books, giving them the opportunity to learn how a library operates and to develop a respect for books. The need for a library in this neighborhood is essential.

Homework Assistance

The Wooten Center offers homework assistance to youths who need help on a daily basis.

Performing Arts Center

The Wooten Center offers activities that allow children to explore a variety of music, film and dance activities. This program helps children discover their creative talents, develop teamwork skills, and develop motor skills.

Street Soldiers

Street Soldiers is a sixteen-week violence prevention, academic preparation and peer education program, where youth learn to speak about their own experiences with violence, life on the streets and often juvenile detention. By taking ownership of their actions, and learning to communicate about them, participants are empowered to make better choices in the future. Youth present violence prevention workshops about their experiences to classmates and the audience learns from the most effective teacher there is -- a peer. Street Soldiers is based on the work of San Francisco’s Omega Boy’s Club, a nationally recognized violence prevention and academic preparation model. The Annie E. Casey Foundation recently published a tool called "Barriers and Promising Approaches to Workforce and Youth Development for Young Offenders Toolkit." This tool cites the Omega Boy’s Club Street Soldiers program as one of fifteen promising programs across the country. The model has been replicated in several Bay Area middle and high schools and reports show excellent results in reducing incidents of referral for suspension/expulsion, violence, bullying and destructive interaction among students.