Project READ August 2014 Accomplishments

One Project READ Family ready for school!

Back To School Story Hour Families For Literacy:

This year over 120 learners, families and friends took part in Project READ’s annual Back To School Story Hour, where we distributed backpacks to all of our school-age students. This year we gave away over 100 backpacks stuffed with much-needed school supplies requested by Redwood City teachers and administration. These backpacks help ensure that Project READ students start off school prepared for success.  Our youngest learners, PreK students, went home with a new lunch bag filled with crayons and a board book to encourage the love of literacy at an early age. In addition to backpacks, all families were given a family book and learners were able self-select books from a variety of titles.

Magic Dan impressed us all with his interactive magic show and helped us celebrate many of our students’ and parents’ birthdays this month. Hands On Bay Area was there to help us distribute backpacks and help our little ones create back-to-school crafts, as well as an edible craft. Volunteers helped make this year’s event such a wonderful event. FLIC Teen Tutors stuffed all the backpacks with school supplies this summer as a way of giving back to their community. Students left filled with energy and excitement to start the new school year.

Family Literacy Instructional Center Book Club & Summer Enrichment Days:

August marked the end of our summer Book Club and Enrichment Days, which lasted 7 weeks during summer. The Junior League helped partner with us on this project that was extremely successful. Over 25 PreK through middle school students took part in the program this year that consisted of Book Clubs, cooking and science projects all done in small groups and alongside adult and teen tutors. Each week, students read and took home a new book and worked on a project or activity tied into the theme of the book. The response was tremendous. It was encouraging to see students gathering together to continue to learn throughout the summer.

Kids In Partnership:
In August, over 125 students, tutors and families eagerly attended the Back to School Story Hour held at the Fair Oaks Community Library.  Anjaline and Mike Eppley performed to a delighted packed house!  In a spectacular kick off to the new school year, they had moms, dads, children and teenagers singing and dancing along with the musical story time!

Thanks to the incredible generosity of Project READ donors, over 100 backpacks stuffed with much-needed school supplies were given out to KIP students and teens. The youngest members of the families were also thrilled to receive kiddie lunch bags filled with colorful board books and their own set of crayons! Families left the event feeling more prepared and truly excited for the upcoming school year!

Adult Community and Adult Inmate Program:

7 new Adult Community matches, 6 Families For Literacy participants in Fathers and Families, 6 women participants in Poetry, 10 women Families For Literacy participants in Writing Club, 10 men began Tutor Training. In a continued effort to be supportive collaborative partners with organizations serving inmates at the San Mateo County jails, Project READ staff and tutors are working with learners to meet goals related to their participation in the Office of Education’s GED services and the College of San Mateo’s (CSM) vocabulary program.  Inmates participating in Project READ one-on-one tutoring have made significant gains. 

Project READ – Adult Literacy Computer Aided Lab:

We had 13 new adult learners join Project READ who are committed to improving their pronunciation, grammar and spelling in English while they wait for a tutor. We have two computer programs that build essential skills, Lexia Reading and Phonics and Rosetta Stone. In June those adults waiting for a one-on-one match logged in over 185 hours using those programs!

Viewpoints: Spread the joy of reading, and help us all, by tutoring

By Greg Lucas
Special to The Bee

Published: Tuesday, Sep. 9, 2014 - 12:00 am

One out of every four adults around the world can’t read a newspaper. Or share a bedtime story with a child. Or follow the instructions on a bottle of medicine.

Nearly a half-century after International Literacy Day was organized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization on Sept. 8, 1966, there are still 775 million adults on this planet who lack minimum literacy skills, according to the World Literacy Foundation.

Among them are an estimated 36 million adults in the United States who can’t read beyond the fourth-grade level. More than 4.5 million of them are Californians.

According to ProLiteracy, low literacy costs this country more than $225 billion each year in workforce nonproductivity and loss of tax revenue due to unemployment.

Low adult literacy contributes to a wide range of social ills. The No. 1 determiner of a kid’s success is the literacy of his or her parents. A high percentage of prison inmates and those living in poverty test at the lowest literacy levels.

Of all the life skills acquired, reading might be the one most taken for granted. By those who can read, anyway.

Gov. Jerry Brown has proclaimed September “Adult Literacy Awareness Month” in honor of the 30th anniversary of California Library Literacy Services, a program of the California State Library.

Public libraries are hosting events this month to address the very serious issue of low adult literacy as part of a statewide awareness campaign called “Together, California Reads.” It’s an effort to spotlight inspirational adult learners and the trained volunteer tutors who change lives forever by sharing the gift of reading through free, one-on-one and group sessions at more than 500 local public libraries.

Roughly 10,000 volunteer tutors teach adult learners to read and write at public libraries all over California. The supply of tutors isn’t enough to meet demand. Nearly 4,000 eager-to-learn California adults are wait-listed statewide, all wanting to read but stymied by a lack of volunteer tutors.

Magic happens when learners and tutors come together. There’s no other way to describe it. Learners’ lives are fundamentally and irrevocably changed by their increased literacy and the newfound realization of their potential as family leaders, workers and community members.

What’s also magical is how the lives of tutors change. Listen to Judi Cunha, a volunteer tutor from San Andreas:

“We don’t have a clue how graced we are to have some of the skills we have until we see people who don’t have those same skills. … To be able to share a skill with somebody. To be able to help a person get impassioned about their own life. There’s just nothing like it. There’s nothing like it in the world.”

Judi and other volunteer tutors share their experiences at CalReads.org.

Better yet, create your own magic. Become a volunteer. It’s simple. Halfway through editing this piece, I stopped and called the public library in Sacramento where I live. Within a few minutes I was signed up for my initial training.

See firsthand how California’s public libraries change lives by changing someone’s life yourself. Give the gift of reading. And see how much you get back in return.

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Greg Lucas is the California State Librarian.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/09/09/6689861/viewpoints-spread-the-joy-of-reading.html#storylink=cpy

http://www.sacbee.com/2014/09/09/6689861/viewpoints-spread-the-joy-of-reading.html

July Accomplishments

July Accomplishments 2014

This July, Project READ learners and tutors were honored at our Annual BBQ & Awards Ceremony. Over 300 learners, tutors, families and community members attended this year’s BBQ & Awards Ceremony! Making this event a success was a collaborative effort, and we so appreciate the 55 volunteers who dedicated their time and talents. These dedicated folks assisted on Friday with set up and preparation and then also on Saturday in a myriad of jobs that truly made the day a memorable experience!

As guests arrived bearing potluck dishes, our festive welcome committee, decked out in elaborate crustacean costumes, pointed them on their way. Families looked on in awe as they saw the CommunityActivities Building at Red Morton Park, transformed into an under-the-sea wonderland. The decorations were created throughout the year by Project READ’s youth, both learners and tutors, and many adult volunteers who wanted to make this celebration of community and accomplishment special and memorable.

As families walked amidst giant sea turtles, jellyfish and rainbow fish, they had the chance to meet and greet some of the members of the Redwood City Friends of Literacy who were handing out inflatable fish to take home. They then got to participate in the "Guess How Many Fish..." game. The highlight though was when each family received their very own hardbound copy of Wow Ocean!, and also selected books for each individual to take home for continued summer reading fun!

Families then encountered a life size whale that joined them for their family portraits. Children and adults enjoyed several thematic crafts that helped build fine motor and sequencing skills. Once outside, some families lounged under the trees listening to the festive mix of music provided by DJ Tim, others enjoyed the opportunity to get their faces painted, eat cotton candy, or try their hand at beanbag and quarterback toss. Children and adults also participated in the outdoor relays, capture the flag, steal the bacon and parachute games. Our last game though, drew only children and there wasn't a dry kid in the park after we finished with duck, duck, sponge!

However, the most exciting part of the day was when the crowd was introduced to the newest recipients of the Spirit of Project READ award! We recognized nine recent high school graduates who have given back to their community through their service at Project READ.

Teen Tutor Award Recipients

Youth, particularly teens and tweens, play an integral part of our Project READ community, as learners, family members and tutors. This year alone over 100 teens actively tutored in our Project READ programs. Among them these teens have stood out due to their years of dedication, hours of commitment and by their own personal achievements. In addition to their own school work, after-school jobs, internships, volunteer projects and family obligations, these young people managed to dedicate their own time to help tutor and mentor younger students. Some of these teens have tutored in multiple youth programs through Project READ; most continued to tutor even through the summer. We have watched these students grow into transformative members of this community, truly future leaders. Many of these teens have been a part of Project READ since they themselves were little ones being tutored in our programs or watching mom or dad being tutored. They then took the initiative to become tutors themselves. Now they are preparing to go off to college, most the first in their families to do so. In the fall they will be heading off to Foothill College, the College of San Mateo, Cañada College, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, Linden College and Cal Poly. The crowd, including Redwood City’s Mayor, Jeffrey Gee, was thrilled to congratulate these exceptional youth who truly exemplify the Spirit of Project READ!

Summer FLIC

This month close to 30 K-4^th graders were paired with 30 Teen Tutors during our week-long summer program. The theme of the week this year was California, so students learned about history, facts and geography related to California. As a whole group, the students experimented with earthquakes, learned about the Gold Rush, cooked with locally grown and distributed foods. In this literacy-based program, students took part in many varied enrichment activities, ranging from science experiments to cooking projects.

Each day students worked in small groups, as well as with their one-in-one match to work on reading, math, science, health-literacy, technology and educational game play. Sessions were set up as whole group and small group learning, with learning stations that varied throughout the day. Students started the week off learning about CA state facts, and then traveled through history to learn about the Great Earthquake and migrant workers, gold mining and more. Each day students broke into small groups for a short book club, reading together a California themed book. As a whole group students created an edible map of the state, using CA based foods to represents the physical features of the state.  Each group presented information about different California cities and taught their peers about their city. We ended the week with a California carnival, which started with a scavenger hunt around the library and ended with food, dessert and an awards ceremony.

After the three-hour program ended each day, the teens were invited to stay on for another hour of Teen Hour. During this time, teens honed their tutoring skills, previewed games and crafts for the next day, prepared food for their little learners and worked on team building. Many of our teens volunteered 20 hours of time to Project READ in that week alone.