Building a foundation
Diana Plosser tried drawing on butcher paper. She tried singing science songs. She led experiments. But her students did not learn seventh-grade science.
Many of her students at Kingston Elementary, a Birmingham City School, in the 1970s were bright and enthusiastic, but most could not read at grade level. Some couldn’t read the word “the.”
Forty years later, Plosser, now retired from teaching at Mountain Brook High School, is helping break a cycle of illiteracy with kids at a younger age. Through Start The Adventure In Reading (STAIR), she tutors a second grader in reading one-on-one for two hours a week.
“In kindergarten through second grade you learn to read, and starting in third grade you read to learn,” said Jeannette Watford, STAIR board member and volunteer coordinator for St. Luke’s Episcopal’s STAIR site. “This is a mantra you now hear everywhere. We want to get [these students] prepared.”
In Mountain Brook, St. Luke’s works with students at Lewis Elementary in North Birmingham, and Canterbury United Methodist partners with Avondale UMC to work with students from Avondale Elementary. Like all the sites, some tutors are from the area around the schools and some are from Over the Mountain areas.
STAIR staff members work with reading teachers and classroom teachers in the schools to find students who are reading below grade level, and those students are assigned to two tutors, each of whom they work with for two hours a week. The result of hours work with phonics, sight words, alphabet review and games is marked improvement in students’ reading. In the 2011-12 school year, students who completed the STAIR program showed an average rate of improvement of 106.5 percent in the standardized reading test given by the schools.
“It’s a lot about encouraging the children,” STAIR incoming executive director Liz Edwards said. “This provides them needed one-on-one time to reinforce things they have learned in school.”
The national program began in Birmingham in 2000 as a ministry of Independent Presbyterian Church and now operates as an independent nonprofit organization. This year it will serve more than 200 children in 10 schools. Its reach is only limited by the number of volunteers who are willing to commit from October to April.
Tutors come in the form of junior high students, retired teachers and virtually anyone who can read.
“Teachers always feel frustrated in the classroom because they can’t give individual attention to the students who need it,” STAIR outgoing executive director Anna James said. “These are the children they couldn’t stop for before.”
The program is about more than learning though. It’s about building relationships with the students and encouraging them.
“It’s altogether serious, and it’s altogether fun,” incoming executive director Liz Edwards said. “So much more happens than tutoring — birthdays, fears, parents reaching out who need a little help.”
Last year IPC held a coat drive after a tutor noticed children getting off the bus with no coats in the winter. St. Luke’s has a Thanksgiving feat and pancake supper for the kids in the program each year, and twice a year they give them a book.
“Being a STAIR tutor is much more than school work,” said the Rev. Richmond Webster, rector at St. Luke’s and former STAIR volunteer. “It’s about a relationship. In the course of the year, we discover that the hopes, fears and dreams of these children are no different than ours.”
As they enter a new year of tutoring, STAIR organizers are hoping to recruit more volunteers.
“We seldom get out of our comfort zone, and this is such a clear window into the lives of our neighbors who are 10 minutes away,” Watford said. “Mountain Brook is full of personal capital, and people wan to use it to help but don’t necessarily know how.”
To learn more about volunteering visit stairbirmingham.org or call Program Director Evelyn Puckett at 933-3684.