Dial-A-Teacher, the UFT’s free homework helpline, is back with a new focus for its 43rd year: helping asylum-seeking students.

The helpline, which fields about 40,000 calls a year, offers K–12 students and their parents live homework support from licensed teachers in English, math, science and social studies in 10 languages.

Program Coordinator Sean Blanks said Dial-A-Teacher is committed to promoting its services in schools with asylum-seeking students and hiring more Spanish-speaking and other multilingual teachers.

Many asylum-speaking families live in transitional housing and are navigating a language barrier, but “the kids are still getting up every day and going to school,” Blanks said. “Anything to ease that process would be such a great help.”

In 2020, Dial-A-Teacher implemented a new system where students can email or text teachers during calls. Originally introduced to provide more comprehensive help during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s now beneficial to asylum-seeking students, many of whom aren’t fluent in English.

Rosanne Kneubuhl, a retired ESL teacher who has worked for Dial-A-Teacher for 15 years, said she asks Spanish-speaking students to text her their homework. She runs the assignments through Google Translate and texts them back in Spanish while speaking with the student on the phone.

“This way, while I’m going over it with them, they see it in front of them in their native language,” she explained.

Kneubuhl said she’s impressed by the dedication of these students to their schoolwork, even as they face such upheaval in their home lives. “They want to do their homework,” she said. “They’re very proud when they understand.”

Kneubuhl noted asylum-seeking parents can also call the helpline with more general questions related to supporting their children’s education. “It’s a bureaucracy, especially with ESL,” Kneubuhl said. “Families have a lot of paperwork to fill out. It can be daunting.”

Dial-A-Teacher is available Monday through Thursday from 4 to 7 p.m. when school is in session. The program can handle questions in 10 languages: Armenian, Bengali, Chinese, English, French, Haitian-Creole, Korean, Russian, Spanish and Tagalog.

To receive homework help, call 212-777-3380 or visit dialateacher.org.