Volunteer Spotlight – Rachel

Meet Rachel, a volunteer tutor at GiGi’s Playhouse Milwaukee. We are 99% volunteer-run and are thankful to have dedicated volunteers like Rachel guiding our participants in programming.

Rachel is a second-year dental student at Marquette University School of Dentistry and the president-elect of the Special Care Dentistry Association student group. She firmly believes that the efforts of every dentist should be in part dedicated to treating patients with limited access to care. This group runs a Dental Tolerance Program that conducts in-home visits with patients during which they discuss oral hygiene and go through the different instruments used in an appointment. Their aim is to provide positive experiences for both children with special needs and SCDA members/future dentists so that they can become more comfortable with each other. Being that she is not yet in the clinic, she saw tutoring at GiGi’s as an incredible opportunity for her to not only give back but learn from a person with Down syndrome.

Over the 10-week summer session, Chad (her student) learned to solve addition and subtraction problems by counting on and counting backward, respectively; identifying odd and even numbers to 20, write and read equations; explain numbers using 100’s, 10’s, & 1’s; and add/subtract two-digit numbers without regrouping.

Our Dental Tolerance program just started up a social media account, so follow them here and you will see this familiar face! https://www.facebook.com/marquettepdo

Want to learn more about volunteering at GiGi’s Playhouse Milwaukee? Check out our page, complete an interest form, and come in to tour the Playhouse! https://gigisplayhouse.org/milwaukee/volunteer/