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

Ruthann Ishihara also volunteers at Greenwood, and she attributes the strong volunteerpresence in the school to a dedicated volunteer coordinator. Since her husband is in the militaryand moves frequently, her children have been in five different schools. “Out of all those schools,this is the best when it comes to community involvement. They do a great job with volunteers,”she says.She had already been volunteering at the school when the volunteer coordinator asked if she’dlike to tutor with the Reading Corps. Ruthann was interested in this because she loves to readherself. In addition, her oldest daughter had reading problems when she was young, andRuthann had read a lot in this area in order to help her daughter. She learned that differentstudents had different ways of learning and she wanted to be able to apply that knowledge tothe students she tutored.Right now, she spends Tuesdays and Thursdays working with Reading Corps students in thethird and fourth grade. In addition, two other days a week she works with reading students whoaren’t WRC targets. She listens while the students read to her from their Accelerated Readingbooks. She also plays reading games with both WRC and non-WRC students.Ruthann says that she has seen the students develop more confidence in their reading ability.“Before the one-on-one sessions, they were often intimidated because they didn’t feel like theymeasured up to their peers.” She adds that volunteering has impacted her as well. “When thekids see me, they’re happy and that makes me feel good. Besides, some of them teach me. I’velearned from their patience and determination.”Students have also become a dedicated source of volunteers. Nearly 8000 served last year aspeer or cross-age tutors with Reading Corps students across the state. Of the 213 ReadingCorps schools, 146 (almost 70%) have used peer or cross-age tutors or both. The VISTA andAmeriCorps members seem to have played a key role in organizing the peer/cross-age tutoringeffort in the schools. For example, all but 29 of the 175 schools with national service membersutilized peer or cross-age tutors last year.In Pateros, a rural town in north central Washington, the VISTA member set up a successfulafter-school tutoring program for WRC students. AmeriCorps members ran the program,supervising peer and cross-age tutors from the combined elementary and junior-senior highschool. One fifth grade girl served as a reading tutor three times a week, even though thiscommitment meant staying after school and taking a late bus home, a ride up the Methow Valleyof nearly an hour.Another Pateros student who volunteered to help gained a great deal from working with theReading Corps, according to his mother. She said that her son, who suffers from AttentionDeficit Disorder, helped a younger student with reading over the year. Tutoring gave him achance to think about someone else, she said. Her son was also able to recognize ADD in theyounger student. The two boys found music as a common interest that they shared to keep the47