Reading program gains ground at local elementary schools

A program that brought 48 of 49 participating kindergarten students at Blanchard Elementary up to grade-level reading ability is finding its footing in another area school.

Read to Succeed, a volunteer reading program sponsored by the United Way, began last Monday for first-grade students at Alma Schrader Elementary. The program uses volunteers to enhance reading skills with one-on-one sessions with students for 30 minutes four times per week.

Alma Schrader's principal, Ruth Ann Orr, said students have already begun to form bonds with tutors. "And we're only in our second week so far," she said. "The kids look forward to that time."

The program is serving 26 first-grade students at Alma Schrader. Although it is designed to boost the reading skills of underperforming students, several at the school are receiving accelerated help because they are reading two levels above their grade level.

"Gifted students are as much in need of a challenge as someone who is being challenged because they are behind, so we want to challenge everyone," Orr said.

Orr and the program's volunteer coordinator, Bekki Cook, worked out before the start of the program that accelerated readers would also receive assistance. Orr said that population was underserved.

According to Nancy Jernigan, executive director of the United Way of Southeast Missouri, increasing offerings to gifted students in area schools is part of the organization's Mobilization for Success Plan's 10 strategies for improving education.

Read to Succeed is the United Way's spin on READ, or the Reading Excellence and Discovery program, brought to the Jackson School District in 2009 by Marsha Sanders. At the time, Sanders was an elementary schoolteacher in the district. The program proved so successful in improving student reading levels that Sanders now coordinates the program in four of Jackson's elementary schools.

Scarlet Winans, a first-grade teacher at Blanchard Elementary, said she sees the benefit of Read to Succeed in the boosted confidence levels of this year's group of first-graders.

"Sometimes, as classroom teachers, we are doing all we can do but what they need is just one more smiling face helping them," Winans said.

Winans said she has noticed students are making better attempts to sound out words they don't know. The volunteers of the program are also helping to make up for an absence of a communication arts teacher who split her time between the classes until budget cuts eliminated that position two years ago, Winans said.

Further expansion

Securing a grant in the next year or other financial contributions from community groups could allow the program to expand to other elementary schools in the Cape Girardeau school districts and then into Scott City Elementary, as long as principals and teachers agree, Jernigan said.

The United Way will apply in early 2012 for an AmeriCorps state formula grant available through the Missouri Community Service Commission to fund expansion.

The program could expand in the community even sooner with the help of additional volunteers. Currently, 121 volunteers are working in both elementary schools. According to Jernigan, if another 20 or so sign up, the program could expand to the Rising Stars after school program at the Shawnee Park Center. That program is a collaborative effort between the Boys and Girls Club of Cape Girardeau and staff of the former Family Resource Center, financially supported by the United Way.

"The more volunteers we get in the loop at this time, the better," Jernigan said. "We know we want and need to expand."

This year the group includes around 20 students from Southeast Missouri State University, members of local service organizations, business people and senior citizens.

"Just yesterday I got a call from an 82-year-old man who wanted to help. He lost his wife last year and wanted something he could do to help the kids and himself," Jernigan said.

Charlotte Matthews is a first-time volunteer at Alma Schrader who found out about the program through her membership in Zonta Club. Matthews said she made the decision to volunteer because she wanted to give to the community and because of the program's flexibility. She said the time it takes to participate in the program works well with her family schedule and job as a financial adviser at Edward Jones.

During training for tutors before the start of the program at Alma Schrader, she said she also thought about the benefit her experience as a tutor could have for her 3-year-old son, Jackson.

"I thought, it's going to be really good to learn how to do this for when I am teaching him to read," she said.

Blanchard principal Barbara Kohlfeld said the program also offers an opportunity for the community to see what is happening in local public schools.

"When you have citizens of the community come on a regular basis, and really witness what goes on, they feel good about it. And they can feel like they are contributing too, because they are," she said.

eragan@semissourian.com

388-3627

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