The Corporation for National Service has pledged thousands of AmeriCorps members, VISTA volunteers, Foster Grandparents, RSVP volunteers, and Learn and Serve college students to the American Reads Challenge. In 1997, when the Clinton Administration increased its allocation of Federal Work-Study (FWS) funds by 35 percent, the U.S. Department of Education encouraged universities and colleges to employ work-study students as reading tutors by waiving the requirement that employers pay part of their wages. More than 1,100 institutions of higher learning have since joined the America Reads Work-Study program.
Programs using FWS tutors are generally pleased: These tutors can work more hours per week than most community volunteers, and the coursework and educational goals of FWS tutors often dovetail nicely with tutoring. As employees, the paid status of FWS tutors enables programs to hold them to higher standards, even to the point of requiring attendance at trainings before paychecks are issued. Another advantage is one of sustainability: If tutors are recruited as freshmen or sophomores and retained throughout their college years, training efforts are maximized and tutors become increasingly expert.
While FWS programs do provide access to a large pool of motivated tutors, this population presents its own unique challenges.
Many programs have found recruiting FWS tutors to be far more difficult than anticipated. In hindsight, programs see that the most critical step in partnering with a university's FWS program is to collaborate with key financial aid officials. Although colleges and universities are committed to supporting America Reads, many other employment opportunities exist for FWS students. Program coordinators need to meet with financial aid officers to help them prioritize supplying tutors to the tutoring program. A long lead time (about six months) is needed to set up the agreements and operating framework to tap into a pool of FWS students. Planning needs to start well before the academic year begins. By November, most FWS students have received job placements; if not already recruited to become tutors, they will be unavailable.
Programs should be prepared for the increased administration FWS requires. Payroll can be complex and, as in working with any college-age population, the logistics of lining up transportation to tutoring and scheduling around students' vacations, test schedules, and coursework are ongoing challenges. Programs also must contend with funding allocations drying up and mandated end dates occurring before the close of the elementary school year.
Corporation for National Service programs offer another cost-effective way for partnerships to access dedicated individuals devoted to service. Many tutoring programs report that they could not have accomplished their goals without the leadership of National Service members and volunteers.
Like FWS students, National Service members and volunteers require particular administrative procedures not necessary for other community volunteers. Benefits of using National Service members and volunteers, however, easily outweigh any administrative disadvantages. Because individuals from National Service are available to work extended hours, they are employed by many tutoring programs as site supervisors or coordinators, tutor trainers and counselors, school liaisons, and overall volunteer managers. Often, AmericaCorps*VISTA volunteers work to facilitate FWS programs. In Boston's Reading Partners, 11 VISTA volunteers are onsite managers in school and after-school programs. At Montana Reads, volunteers from AmericaCorps *VISTA organize and provide tutor training and develop after-school and summer programs throughout the state.
Like all volunteers, National Service members and volunteers come to tutoring with varied backgrounds. Some are immediately suited for independent responsibilities; others require intensive training and supervision. The advantages of National Service members and volunteers are that, unlike other community volunteers, they are available for extensive and ongoing trainings and can make a full-time commitment to a program.
June Atkins, Director of Montana's America Reads, states, "I'm absolutely amazed by the accomplishments of the AmeriCorps* VISTAs in developing and organizing reading tutoring programs in such a short time with limited direction and supervision." Most program organizers agree, and find that National Service members' and volunteers' skills, availability, accountability, and ties to public and private resources make them an excellent base on which to build a solid program infrastructure.
Several America Reads programs are helping parents to answer "yes" when their child asks, "Mommy, will you read this book with me?" These programs are teaching parents to tutor their own children. Parents as Tutors, a program of Cleveland Reads in Ohio, instructs parents how to teach letter-sound relationships, recognize word patterns, and use effective read-together strategies with their children. A survey after the first training indicated that virtually 100 percent of the material covered in the session was new to the parents.
When parent involvement is part of the tutoring paradigm, it has an important multiplier effect. Involved parents are more likely to support their child's schoolwork, reinforce the tutor-student relationship, and instigate reading activities at home. To encourage parents to help their children read, the staff of America Reads in Muskegon, Michigan, writes a column in the school newsletter filled with simple, at-home tutoring strategies.
Literacy Volunteers of America in Salt Lake City, Utah, finds that parent involvement not only accelerates the child's reading development, but also has an added benefit: Parents who lack literacy skills increase their own abilities while reading with their children. Also in Salt Lake City, PTA-sponsored literacy workshops led by a master trainer instruct parents and grandparents in read-aloud skills.
Welfare parents who were trained to tutor their own children at Tennessee Reads in Nashville are so enthusiastic about their new skills that some of them have volunteered to take on additional students. Oneida County America Reads Challenge in Utica, New York, reports that the tutor training it offers to Head Start parents lets them "actively partake in their children's education and development."
Some partnerships train parents as tutors with packaged programs, such as the Jim Trelease Read Aloud video. Other programs find success using interactive tools such as role playing and group discussions to provide literacy trainings for parents and grandparents. Princeton Young Achievers held a family night for parents of its tutored children. Upon arrival at the school, parents opened a personalized passport. Inside were instructions to find a book and have their child read it to them; find their child's tutor and teacher; and locate and read three posters that identified simple activities parents and children could do at home to encourage reading and writing.
The child, of course, is the most important member of the tutoring team. Matching his or her interests, abilities, and background with a tutor is a challenge that every program must address. Talk About Reading! in Decatur, Illinois, selects the best tutor for each child by first having teachers meet with tutors individually, then scheduling a second meeting with the student present. Not only does this strategy maximize the potential for a good relationship between the tutor and student, but also reinforces the tutor's collaboration with the classroom teacher.
End of story.
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