When Revere High School senior Ejlal Mohammedsalih launched a local chapter of Connect Me last year, she saw an opportunity to address two needs at once: younger students looking for extra academic support and high school students searching for meaningful, flexible ways to give back.
Since then, the program has steadily grown, connecting students with free virtual tutoring while giving Revere High students a chance to earn community service hours, develop leadership skills, and build confidence as mentors.
Connect Me is an international nonprofit organization that provides free virtual tutoring to students in kindergarten through eighth grade. Mohammedsalih established the Revere High chapter in March 2025 after recognizing that traditional volunteer opportunities do not always fit into students’ busy schedules.
“I felt like a lot of the high school students at Revere High wanted to earn community service hours, but for certain reasons they weren’t able to,” Mohammedsalih said. “Maybe they had stuff going on after school.”
At the same time, she knew there were younger students who could benefit from additional academic support. Creating a Connect Me chapter at RHS, she said, offered a way to bring those two groups together.
“Starting a chapter at my high school would allow students not only to get community service hours, but also for students who needed tutoring to get that,” she said.
The model is designed to be simple and flexible. Tutoring takes place entirely through Zoom, typically for one hour each week. Rather than requiring tutors to be available at a specific time or location, students can arrange sessions around their own schedules.
That flexibility has helped the RHS chapter grow. Mohammedsalih said the program began last year with about 20 participants and has since expanded to about 30 to 40, including about 20 tutors from Revere High School.
Tutoring is not limited to one subject. Younger students indicate the subject and grade level in which they need assistance, while prospective tutors identify the areas in which they feel most comfortable helping. A middle school student seeking help in math, for example, can be matched with a tutor who has indicated that math is one of their strengths.
The same approach can be used for science, history, and other subjects, allowing the program to respond to the individual needs of each student.
While the immediate goal is to provide academic assistance, Mohammedsalih said she has also watched the experience benefit the students doing the tutoring.
“I think it’s really cool just to see growth happen,” she said. “I’ve seen students — like the high school students that I work with — grow themselves through tutoring, like become more confident in themselves.”
She said younger students have also benefited academically, with some seeing their grades improve after receiving tutoring.
Although Mohammedsalih’s chapter is centered at Revere High School, Connect Me itself has a much broader reach. Tutors throughout the organization include high school and early college students, with participants located around the world.
Now, Mohammedsalih hopes to make more Revere families aware that the resource is available.
Her work establishing the RHS chapter has largely focused on recruiting high school students to serve as tutors. The next step is reaching more families at Revere’s elementary and middle schools whose children may need additional academic support.
“I also do want to let the younger students in elementary schools and middle schools in Revere who need extra help be able to get this help through Connect Me,” she said.
For families, one of the program’s most important features is its cost: There isn’t one.
Mohammedsalih emphasized that Connect Me tutoring is completely free, removing a potential barrier for families who may want additional academic support for their children but cannot or do not want to pay for private tutoring.
“It’s a completely free program, so it’s a really great opportunity and resource that I feel like a lot of students should take advantage of,” she said, particularly for students who need additional help beyond what they are able to receive during the school day.
As a senior, Mohammedsalih is also thinking about what comes next — both for herself and for the program she built at Revere High.
She plans to attend a four-year college or university in Massachusetts and study biochemistry. Before graduating, however, she wants to ensure the RHS Connect Me chapter continues after she leaves.
Mohammedsalih is already working with current chapter members to identify a sophomore or junior who could step into a leadership role and continue growing the program.
That succession would allow the chapter to become an ongoing student-led resource at RHS — one in which older students help younger students succeed while gaining valuable experience themselves.
For Mohammedsalih, that combination has been at the heart of Connect Me from the beginning: making tutoring more accessible for younger students while giving high school students a practical way to serve their community.
Revere High students interested in becoming tutors can learn more through the RHS Connect Me chapter. The program offers flexible scheduling, community service hours, and leadership experience. Families of students in grades K-8 can also explore Connect Me as a free option for additional academic support.
More information about the Revere High chapter is available on Instagram at @revere_connectme. Students can also use the classroom code pgldes6a, and questions can be directed to [email protected].
