Heidi Whitehouse, History and Literature, Class of 2013

As the Youth & Education intern for SEEDS, Whitehouse coordinates the Friends of the Children tutoring program at Reed, matching Reedies with 3^rd through 5^th grade students for tutoring in math, reading, writing, and other areas as needed. After transferring from a low-income high school to a high-income high school, Whitehouse began to understand the ways in which the quality of public education correlates to socioeconomic status and how college education is disproportionally encouraged for members of certain communities and neighborhoods. These experiences affirmed Whitehouse’s committed to increasing education accessibility. She says, “The United States public education is too big and entrenched a system for an individual like me to attempt to change, but for the moment my position with SEEDS allows me to attempt redistributing the wealth (of my own educational privilege) a little bit to less advantaged kids.” Whitehouse also volunteers as an ESL teacher at VOZ Worker’s Rights Project where she reads with elementary school students who struggle with literacy, and participates in SEEDS weekend service trips to local domestic abuse shelters and food banks.