At 3:15 on Monday afternoon, the day is over for most kids at Bancroft Elementary, a public grade school in Mount Pleasant. But the student tutors from GW, American and Howard universities brought by Heads Up and the D.C. Reads program have just arrived, and their challenges for the day are starting to add up.

“There’re no snacks today?” GW freshman Crystal Hahn cries when she hears the bad news. “Those kids are going to have a riot!”

Ten minutes later, Hahn is in a classroom with fellow tutors Josh Lasky and Harry Mushlan and 18 rowdy fifth- and sixth-grade students excited to be done with classes for the day. The tutors pass around a question, written on a sheet of newsprint in magic marker: “If you could be any animal, which one would you be and why?”

Since 1997, D.C. Reads has sent college students from around the District into classrooms in Bancroft and similar schools to try to make a difference in the lives of Washington children. Neither the emotional rewards nor the $12-an-hour work-study wages make the job any easier, though. The tutors at Bancroft ultimately have to find their own reasons for taking the hour-long trip to the school, where for three hours they become “Mr. Josh,” “Mr. Mushlan” and “Ms. Crystal.”

“I tutored lesser-privileged elementary kids in high school and I really enjoyed it, so when I found out abut D.C. Reads I was excited about tutoring kids again,” Hahn said.

After stalling for a minute, the kids open their backpacks and find paper to complete the journal entry. A boy breaks the tip of his pencil as he begins to write and flicks the point of lead across the room in frustration.

“Did you just flick that at someone, or was it just my imagination?” Lasky asks. The boy coolly replies that it was his imagination, and Josh says, “Then I guess I won’t be seeing it again.”

The group finishes writing and a few students stand up to share their responses. The boy who flicked the pencil lead wants to be a king cobra.

As they wrap up the opening drill, the tutors discover that they have a snack for the kids, after all. Lasky asks everyone to quiet down and walks between the clusters of desks, setting a packet of Strawberry Newtons before every student sitting silently. Before long, everyone is munching on the cookies.

“This is really, really hard work,” said Joy Hunt, the full-time Heads Up coordinator at Bancroft Elementary. “It is really hard, but it speaks to the caliber of college students who want to spend time with these kids.”

Thirty-six GW students tutor at Bancroft, Hunt said, the most volunteers the school receives from any college or university in the District.

“I think a good thing about this program is that it helps students find like-minded kids,” Hunt said.

On Nov. 2 Hunt called a meeting of every Heads Up tutor working at Bancroft. She discussed an October gang shooting that wounded a Metro bus driver near the tutors’ stop. Hahn and several others had just missed the same bus on the day of the shootout. At the close of the meeting, Hunt offered tutors concerned for their safety a chance to opt out of the program. There were no takers.

“It’s obviously something to be concerned about, but we can’t live in fear,” Heads Up tutor and GW freshman Rubin Gonzalez said, regarding the shooting. “We have to realize that these kids go through this kind of thing every day, and we have to stand by them.”

Laura Serico, assistant program coordinator for D.C. Reads, said students get involved with the program for a variety of reasons.

“I was looking for community service and a job, and this combined two of those things,” Mushlin said. “(Kids we tutor) get to joke around with us more than with teachers, but there’s still a school environment.”

Freshman Laetitia Lukanda worked with children in the past, but not in the same capacity. She previously dealt mainly with drug indication, and now she tutors first- and second-graders at Bancroft.

“When I was back home in Massachusetts, I used to work with kids, but this is different,” she said. “I just like working with them because you really do feel like you make a difference.”

Serico also noted that because tutoring commitments last for at least one semester, a tutor can become a friend and role model for a child, even without contributing a tremendous number of hours each week.

“Say you were (tutoring) three hours a week on Friday afternoon,” she said. “The kids will hear that, say, ‘Mr. Steve’ is coming on Friday afternoon, and that’s a time they’ll come to look forward to.”