Washington Reading Corps: Impacts of National Service and the ...

with kids is all I want to do. It’s a constant feedback of the learning process. It’s up to me tohelp others, somehow try to influence positively on children. If you are a role model you have toact like one. I want to build up an “ethic of service” and be an active community member, in oneway or another, to help create the future generation.In general, I think community members in Orondo are now more involved in their kids’education. There’s not just a specific story to tell, but a lot of stories, every one with specialimpacts. I believe we have made somehow an impact on those kids, or at least tried to makehappy one kid. It’s an amazing experience—you feel the spirit of helping people and that’s whatmakes you feel you’re doing the best option.Now that my term is ending, I’m heading back to Long Beach, more schooling. I want to get ateaching credential and have fun while I learn. Another page in the history of my life is over.Isabel FalconAmeriCorps Member, Wenatchee (1999-2000)When I started out the year as an AmeriCorps tutor, I was freshly out of high school and didn’texactly know where I was headed—I only knew that I was interested in the educational fieldand that’s why I was there. I met lots of teachers, learned about the school system, and how itworks. I had never worked with such a big variety of people but I learned how to work wellwith them in spite of our differences.Within a few months I also got to know each child I worked with really well. I learned abouttheir needs and with guidance from the teachers, I was able to help them. But some of thesekids needed more attention than what a reading tutor could give them. They not only needed todevelop good reading skills, they needed lots of attention, a good role model, sometimes asimple pep talk or a personal cheerleader, but most of all, love. I feel like I tried my best to givethem that type of support.One success story I had this year is about the progress in reading I saw. I noticed improvementsin all my kids, but in one class they achieved more than expected. It was a group of secondgrade kids and the majority started out slow, mostly reading between 15 to 25 words perminute. But there were a couple that didn’t even get up to that rate. By the middle of the yearthere was hardly any improvement, so I thought of a way to change that. At first I made up twogroups—one was made up of better readers and the other one of strugglers. This I thought wasto get all my attention focused on the strugglers when I had them. But it turned out that mystrugglers were falling asleep (along with me), which was the main reason why they were havingsuch a hard time learning to read. And the other group was too awake and talkative. So Idivided them up once again, this time into groups partnering one child from each group to makeone good reader with one struggler. I also included one “fun day” per month, which includedgames like monopoly and prizes to get them motivated towards reading. Eventually the results37