Our History

ASM started because of three caring individuals

Inspired to help students in East Palo Alto and eastern Menlo Park, three local mothers, Ann Carter, Sharon Purcell and Carol Chalmers, founded an organization in 2008 and decided to call it "All Students Matter" (ASM) to reflect their belief that every student matters and deserves a quality education no matter what neighborhood they live in. With a small group of friends they started volunteering in several classrooms at Belle Haven elementary school.

Executive Director history

Carolyn Blatman joined the founders of ASM, volunteering in the classroom and quickly became the organization’s first Executive Director with a vision to improve the program and expand its reach in Ravenswood. As a parent in Palo Alto, Carolyn saw the discrepancies between the educational opportunities between her own child’s school district and the Ravenswood District, a mere 5 minutes from her home. Carolyn knew the positive impact that caring, trained volunteers could make in an underserved district to support both students and teachers. Carolyn served as ASM’s Executive Director for 10 years before transitioning responsibilities to our current Executive Director Angie Holman and joining our advisory board.

Volunteers make our community stronger

ASM has increased its presence in the Ravenswood district every year since its inception and currently has almost 200 trained tutors, averaging 3 years with ASM, serving students in all Ravenswood elementary schools from Transitional Kindergarten through 5th grade. The Ravenswood teachers partner with ASM volunteers to improve the academic performance and social-emotional well-being of the students.
 
Over the years, the addition of an all-volunteer leadership team enabled us to sustain the growth and continue to add high quality programming. 

The ASM approach always meets district priorities

Our approach is to work with the talented Ravenswood district leaders and teachers and align with their priorities. Our program began with in-classroom tutoring and has always had an emphasis on building students' literacy skills, helping students with reading, writing and common core math. When the district made literacy intervention a priority, we added specialized volunteers to support those teachers on special assignment. We have also added specially trained volunteers who lead a mentoring book club which fosters literacy and comprehension skills as well as social-emotional skills for 5th graders. Beginning in 2021, we added volunteer support for hands-on science in the classroom.
 
When the Ravenswood district moved to distance learning in the 2020-21 year, ASM adapted to partner with teachers to meet new priorities. ASM created new online tutoring programs that preserve ASM’s support of teachers and students in TK-5th grades while everyone was learning and working remotely.

With the 2021-22 school year, the Ravenswood district returns to in-person instruction and our volunteers will once again be in classrooms supporting students and their teachers.