Our team of Butler Church volunteers enthusiastically signed up again this past school year to spend time with first grade students we had never met. Equipped with literacy mentoring resources and training, they were ready to face the challenge teachers have each year: helping kids who are behind in reading get off to a better start.
As a former teacher, this ministry is dear to my heart. To see it form and expand to serve entire families has been icing on the cake.
How it all started
Seven years ago, my friend, Debra, attended a meeting at which she learned about Every Neighborhood Partnership (ENP), a new non-profit that has the goal of creating church-to-school partnerships for every elementary school in Fresno. ENP provides literacy services to children in underperforming schools in Fresno. Since our church is located in such a neighborhood, we felt this was worthy of a serious look.
On the recommendation of ENP and with the blessing of our pastor, we first reached out to our local school, Ayer Elementary, and made an appointment with the principal. She was extremely interested in a literacy mentoring program and encouraged us to make plans to give it a try. It was March so we decided that Debra and I would offer a trial program for the next two months to see if it was feasible.
Armed with Starbucks frappuccinos, the following week I met with the teachers after school and explained what we felt we could bring to their students and how it would work. We asked for their input also. They were not overly enthusiastic, nor did they want the disruption of us working directly in their classrooms.
Fortunately, this school has a commons area right outside the first-grade classrooms, and so it was decided that we would meet with students there. The teachers provided us with a list of five first graders, and we were off and running. Debra worked with the children one day a week, and I worked with them another day.
Since this was such a new initiative of ENP, no real teaching aids were ready. Debra and I were on a maiden voyage and simply used whatever resources we each had available to us.
At first, it was quite basic. We had the list of standard words the children should already have learned. As we got to know the children, we played simple games that would teach and reinforce these words.
Although it was basic, we felt we helped the children assigned to us. By June, the teachers were already asking us to return the following year and to work with even more students.
Expanding our team and tools
Now we needed to increase our productivity by recruiting additional literacy mentors. That July, Debra and I were given time during a Sunday morning service to let our congregation know of this new and exciting opportunity in our neighborhood. We explained that we were looking for people who love children, who would be willing to come to Ayer School once a week and would consider investing in the lives of five or six students for the next year. We got a good response.
We wanted our mentors to be properly trained, and the first few years that was handled locally at Butler Church. In time, as more local churches and schools were paired up, ENP put together a training protocol and literacy kit. Our mentors now attend an ENP training and a webpage has been developed which has training videos as well as games with instructions.
Why literacy mentoring matters
ENP uses the designation of mentors rather than tutors because they see this as not only instruction in literacy but also as a chance to minister and model. Many of the children we relate to have fractured families, absentee fathers and support at home is not always available. As mentors, we seek to provide support and encouragement in addition to helping with literacy.
The more we learned about the importance of literacy, the more keenly we felt that this was our mandate. Research alarmingly shows that poor reading ability is linked to a higher risk of ending up in prison. A large proportion of incarcerated individuals read below a basic level, often at or below a fourth grade reading level.
Studies go on to suggest that children struggling to read by the end of third grade are at a higher risk of dropping out of school and engaging in criminal behavior, contributing to the link between low literacy and incarceration.
How the program works
Volunteers do go through an application process to be vetted by ENP and the school district, including being fingerprinted for the safety of the children. This was not a problem for our volunteers, and everyone sailed through the process.
Using our local school district’s reading program, several of us collaborated and created a workbook which is now used with the children. It includes letters and sounds of the alphabet, review words from kindergarten, and the first-grade sight words—all 195 of them—which are introduced in the course of the first-grade year. The goal is that all these words will be recognized on sight, with five words added each week.
For first graders who are struggling with reading, taking in so many new words is understandably overwhelming and can lead to discouragement. Literacy mentors get to come alongside and encourage them, helping them see what words they can learn and building on that success.
Literacy mentor kits include a booklet for each child with their name, the words they are reviewing and a place to mark their progress. This visual makes it easy to see how quickly the child is progressing through the lists or pages and lets the mentors know which list of words to focus on.
Because reinforcement is very important in learning words, each word is checked off five times before it is considered mastered. With so many words to cover and the repetition that is involved, positive reinforcement and fun activities sure help. Through the years we have added a number of instructional activities and games, so the children have a variety to choose from.
Over time, we have also collected many grade level books. Some were donated by former teachers and others were purchased from teachers through a “garage sale” which a local supply store hosts each year.
Although the teachers were a little skeptical at first, by now they are our best advocates and cannot wait for us to join forces with them every September. Once the teachers have done their assessments of the new crop of children, they give me a list of five or six students they feel would profit from mentoring.
I do a simple pretest with each student and prepare a booklet based on the words they need to learn. I also refresh the kit which has all the necessary components for the mentors. On average, we have 12 mentors annually and they each donate between 90 minutes and two and a half hours weekly, depending on their available time.
Mentoring as ministry
It is wonderful that most of our mentors have been with us since the beginning. Many are retirees who especially appreciate this volunteer opportunity which they see as a ministry.
“I was blessed to be trained as reading teacher in my career as an educator,” Pat Unruh says. “It is a pleasure to continue using that training in retirement as a mentor. It is very rewarding to build a mentoring relationship with my first graders and watch their progress as they receive a little extra help.”
We generally have more women mentors than men. While all mentors are a blessing, our men are very highly favored by the children.
Harold Ens has been a mentor since the beginning. He says, “As an educator and a minister, I’ve lived my life helping others to grow in knowledge, character and faith. In retirement, serving as a literacy mentor at Ayer has given me much joy, as I’ve been able to see these young ones make progress in their journey toward being able to read. That’s something that will help them be able to grow in all three.”
Future partnership possibilities
Our relationship with Ayer Elementary School began with mentoring. However, it is now branching out and including other ways the whole family can be served. Butler Church is helping to set up a food pantry and Care Closet. We’ve encouraged both teachers and students through special gifts at Christmas.
All of these are ways our entire congregation has an opportunity to participate: by donating, assembling gift bags and praying over those who will receive them. Our growing goal is to assist Ayer Elementary in ministering to the whole family.
Shirley Fransen Holm taught kindergarten and first grade for 22 years and used her piano skills in church and as a private lesson instructor. She and her husband, Jim, have served USMB churches as a pastoral couple, most recently at Butler Church in Fresno, Calif.
