The success of a tutoring program rides on the abilities, energy, and commitment of its volunteer tutors. However, enthusiasm and a desire to help children learn to read is not enough to ensure that tutoring will be effective. Without strong preservice preparation, ongoing training and support, and good feedback, volunteers are left to rely on the capabilities and preconceived notions they bring to the program. The goal of a good tutor-training program, therefore, should be to mine the initial energy volunteers bring, and refine it into a professional base of knowledge and tutoring skills. A dynamic, thorough, and ongoing training program transforms idealistic volunteers into qualified, effective, and confident tutors.
A good tutor-training program also has built-in mechanisms for assessment, both of participants and by participants. Effective trainers incorporate participants' feedback and include tutors' reflections and needs into future training agendas. America Reads in Muskegon, Michigan, holds inservice sessions that serve as focus groups to determine future training needs. D.C. Reads in Washington, D.C., is one of many programs to have tutors complete written training evaluations, which are then used to modify and improve upcoming training sessions.
Tutor trainers may be reading specialists, classroom teachers, or school administrators. They also may be staff members from the America Reads partnership, who in some cases serve as onsite coordinators and provide ongoing training support.
Whatever the composition of the tutor-training team, it is essential that all members be well prepared to implement a cohesive training program. As the University Park Tutoring Program in Worcester, Massachusetts, has found, a strong, enthusiastic training team is essential to generating early enthusiasm and momentum.
MCC L.E.A.D.S. (Mesa Community College Literacy Education and Development through Service) in Mesa, Arizona, selects a training team from various disciplines-sociology, reading, bilingual language development, psychology, and children's literature-to develop a one-day workshop for work-study student tutors. Experts in each discipline present information on literacy skills and literature, reading theory, child development and learning, and child welfare issues. Anchorage Reads uses a tutor-training team that includes experts in curriculum and materials development, teacher trainers, and university instructors.
Like the training of trainers, a good tutor-training plan includes attention to both methods and content of training.
Understanding how children learn is central to tutoring. But just as important to the implementation of an effective tutor-training program is a knowledge of how adults learn. A training program for volunteers should begin with an explicit recognition of the rich life experiences that adult learners bring to a new situation. All volunteer tutors have attended school, learned to read, lived in local communities, and worked in organizations. Many have raised children. Encouraging tutors to reflect on these experiences as they incorporate new learning is a basic tenet of adult education. Preservice tutor training should be experiential, according to reports from partnerships. Many programs incorporate role play, demonstrations of actual tutoring sessions, site visits, home visits, community explorations, practice tutoring, interviews, and other first-hand activities. At Systematic Training for America Reads Tutors (START) in Norristown, Pennsylvania, new tutors have three practice sessions with their students. During these sessions, the reading specialist observes and demonstrates corrections and other techniques on the spot. At inservice trainings, tutors may make materials to use in their tutoring sessions while learning about the reading skills such materials are intended to help build.
After their initial training, tutors in the Monterey County America Reads Consortium in California process their progress, successes, and challenges through reflection journals and monthly meetings. Generalizing from actual experiences encourages tutors to incorporate new concepts in a way that informs future practice (Knowles, Holton, & Swanson, 1998). Bay Area Youth Agency Consortium (BAYAC) in San Francisco, California, emphasizes a learning spiral in which tutors: learn new skills through inservice training; deliver service; reflect on their experience; and evaluate results.
As illustrated by these 61 America Reads partnerships, training takes many shapes. Most partnerships agree, however, that effective training is a combination of preservice and inservice sessions, combined with frequent feedback and ongoing support. The programs' length and delivery of training varies from a short, preservice session to as much as 40 instructional hours; from a simple site orientation to high-tech delivery by interactive videoconferences.
A good tutor-training program requires more than teaching the mechanics of reading. Good training also helps tutors develop the skills to motivate and communicate with children. To do this effectively, the training must not only be geared to the children's needs, but also to the needs, knowledge base, and experience of the volunteer tutors. Young volunteers from AmeriCorps, for example, may require a different level of training, supervision, and skill building than graduate students in education. Retired senior citizens who perhaps have not spent much time with children in recent years may require a different approach to training than young parents involved in a welfare reform program.
At Book Buddies in the Bronx, for instance, some tutors have needed to brush up their own reading skills. The program has tailored training to fill in these tutors' knowledge gaps and does not ask them to perform tasks for which they are unprepared, such as writing a lesson plan.
On the other end of the spectrum, the 40-hour training program of Detroit's Brightmoor America Reads gives tutors an academically oriented reading overview, from the history of reading instruction to a review of traditional methodologies. Tutors learn such information as how affective behaviors impact the reading process.
More typically, Vermont Reads in Waterbury limits its instruction on reading theory in favor of a heavy emphasis on three hands-on strategies for tutors to use in their sessions with students: reading to children; reading with children; and integrating language play activities.
In general, programs divide training into the following components:
Preservice training necessarily covers program goals and logistics specific to each program and site. Many programs stress to tutors that they are now part of a team whose members are tutor, parent, teacher, and child. To create an atmosphere conductive to high performance, tutors must be told exactly what is expected of them. For this, many programs use a tutor handbook. While offering no substitute for training, the handbook provides a written job description and outline of the program's mission, policies, and procedures that volunteers can use as a reference.
Fordham University program's tutor manual is a loose-leaf binder with the following sections: administrative topics, program-specific information, basics of literacy and tutoring, and resources. Tutors can add materials from training sessions and other resources to create a manual tailored to their own needs. Although other programs have also developed their own manuals, many base their tutoring model on one of several commercially available tutoring manuals written by literacy experts. For a review of tutor manuals, refer to the Favorite Manuals sidebar.
In its site orientation, Monterey County America Reads asks tutors to sign a partnership agreement with the school that covers the school dress code, volunteer work schedule and absence policy, and ethical and professional expectations for tutors and school personnel. Other programs discuss with tutors the ethics and rules of law regarding working with children, as well as stressing the need for confidentiality.
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A tutor's personal commitment means the world to a child. When a tutor appears consistently each week, enthused and ready to work, the child gets the message: "I believe in you." The child responds with a growing confidence in his or her abilities. Because this tutor-student connection is so vital, many programs take special steps to promote tutor satisfaction and prevent waning commitment.
All partnerships recognize that a good tutor-child match is the first step toward building a positive relationship. Some programs ask the child's classroom teacher to interview potential tutors in order to make the most advantageous match. In a preservice training session, community partners of the Fordham University program acquaint tutors with the population they will work with through an overview of community demographics. Bay Area Youth Agency Consortium selects tutors for specific students on the basis of their background, languages spoken, and familiarity with particular schools.
Northeast Arkansas Reads in Jonesboro notes that, while it is important for tutors to look for common ground with children, "differences in language or background knowledge should not be viewed as deficits, but [as] differences in the funds of knowledge children bring with them." A tutor from Montana Reads learned something about relationships her first day as a tutor: "The first time I met with a Native American girl, she asked, 'What tribe do you belong to?' This made me very much aware of how far apart we were culturally. I know very little about the Native American culture that is her world."
America Reads at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti provides its tutors with training in child development. Otherwise, tutors could misunderstand what may be simply age-appropriate behavior.
At START in Norristown, Pennsylvania, trainers strive to create realistic expectations by stressing that the reading process may develop differently for low-income students. Tutors are instructed on the stages of reading development: prereading, decoding, and confirmation/fluency. Tutors are taught to assess each child's reading abilities and create an individualized tutoring plan. According to reports from many programs, tutors also need to know the typical reading skills and instructional goals for each grade level.
Tutor trainers with America Reads in San Marcos, Texas, use the plain-speaking book, How to Talk So Kids Can Learn (Faber & Mazlish, 1996) to emphasize the importance of effective communication with children. Omaha America Reads tutors learn non-threatening strategies for discipline.
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