By Marcia Klenbort, Project Director, The Center for School Success

SPRING 1997 (archived information - please note the date of publication)

America Reads addresses a worthy goal: every child reading by third grade. But what of the students in third grade, and older, still unable to read? This group of learners is discouraged, and they constitute a substantial part of the U.S. student population. Beginning at fourth grade, achievement levels drop and keep dropping for as many as 40 to 50 percent of students in some districts, until the students finally drop out of school. These discouraged learners are often in AmeriCorps programs. What can program staff and members do to assist them?

Working with discouraged learners in fourth grade and beyond is more complex than working with younger students. Producing new and varied lessons for these students is not enough; AmeriCorps staff and members must take the following important steps if they are to make a real difference: confront the learner's feeling of failure; strike out on new paths to change expectations from low to high; and make vital connections to other people and programs.

Confronting the Feeling of Failure, Being Stuck
Students who have persistently identified themselves as failures can get stuck in that mode. And being stuck in that dead end prevents their further learning. When they are so identified by themselves, and by their teachers, peers, and/or parents, no wonder they are discouraged!

If I am this far along in school and can't read, I see myself as a failure. I don't want to look this way to my friends, so I'll act in ways that hide me (I'll be real quiet, or real noisy; or I'll act out, be the class clown) and divert attention from my failure.

They need a way to jolt themselves and others surrounding them into a new way of looking at themselves where they expect something more of themselves and of those to assist them.

Striking Out On New Paths to Create High Expectations of Learners

Focus on the learners as individuals, one by one

Listen to students' interests. Tailor reading and writing and word-learning assignments to exactly what the learner wants to know. Write a story whose main characters and plot come from the learner's life. Help students discover what "learning styles" are the best for them, and work with them to develop a "learner profile," so that they come to understand that they learn best by listening, seeing, touching, or doing by writing or even converting learning experiences to music.

Focus on short-term goals

Simple, short term goals enable learners to see success. Evaluations every grading period (at eight- or nine-week intervals) are much too infrequent to help learners connect their own efforts with a resulting success. A goal for every tutoring session is a good idea followed by a goal for the week.

Use service-learning to teach academic subjects

Service -learning is a great eye-opener and a great learning tool for discouraged learners. Writing up results of service-learning is a good way to start.

Widen the audience for the learner's achievements

When a learner succeeds, who knows about it? Create "learning grams" for parents and teachers, or produce newsletters where students write of their own achievements to share with each other

Keep good records of academic success.

Use a "Learner Log" to help learners keep track of "what I am feeling today," "what I learned today," and to look back and appreciate progress. Charts and graphs on the wall of the learning center all help to focus attention on success.

We Can't Do It Alone: Making Vital Connections

Connect with past literacy triumphs

Look at historical models and results that give conceptual precedents. For example, in the 1960s the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Freedom Schools taught reading to African Americans in the South to enable them to leap over the barriers created by discriminatory registrars, to register to vote. Their teaching process was what is now called "learner-centered," and they always asked the questions, "What do you want to learn?" and "Now what will you do with what you have learned?"

Connect with school leaders in intervention strategies

The role of the school or community reading specialist is key for students who have spent years already in school not reading. Connecting efforts with them is important. If your program doesn't have access to a reading specialist and is not connected to the learner's school, it is worth your while to become an advocate to insist that all the resources of the school district come to the aid of the learner! And the reading specialist can coach and train your members.

Connect with research on effective volunteer tutoring programs

Be aware that many of the tutoring programs now used by AmeriCorps programs haven't yet been evaluated. Be on the alert for evaluations that can guide you, and build evaluation into your own programs, using the helpful assistance of Project STAR, the training and technical assistance provider for evaluation.

Connect with the Middle School Reform Movement

School and community leaders nationwide are helping middle school students (6th, 7th and 8th graders) turn around their own school failures to become successful at learning. Students in middle school are at the important and critical age of needing to turn experiences of failure into those of success.

The Center for School Success is connected with teachers, school administrators, catalyst community organizations, and foundations across the nation who are intent on helping middle school students make the change to successful achievement. There are a number of lessons from this movement that can be useful for AmeriCorps and other streams.

The Center also provides phone consultations, limited site visits, training sessions, materials for use in training, a quarterly newsletter, The AmeriCorps Tutor and other information for AmeriCorps (and other streams) projects whose focus is education. They will soon be publishing and distributing Students Teaching Students: A Handbook for Cross-Age Tutoring (see the article on cross-age tutoring, page 2), and they provide "Learner Logs" for recording academic success upon request. Program directors and coordinators who design and manage in-school and out-of-school programs whose aim is to help discouraged learners make progress are encouraged to contact them. Coordinator Tenera McPherson and Director Marcia Klenbort are available by phone: (404) 522-8764 (Tenera, x24; Marcia, x36); by fax: (404) 522-8791; and by e-mail: 73251.2024@compuserve.com