Volunteers help students gain reading, math literacy

Elementary students who have difficulties with the core subjects of reading and math face challenges that will follow them throughout their school years and into adulthood. For these youngsters the volunteers of the Minnesota Reading and Math Corps can help them gain the skills they need for success.
Reading is the foundation of all learning and research shows that if a child isn’t reading well by the end of third grade it can be almost impossible to catch up. For that reason, Minnesota Reading Corps provides volunteers the opportunity to work one on one with youngsters pre-kindergarten through third grade to build those reading skills.
Those grade levels are important, Minnesota Reading Corps materials say, because research shows that 74 percent of children who read poorly in third grade continue to read poorly in high school. Through third grade is when children learn to read; beyond third grade, they read to learn.
Minnesota Math Corps is designed to give the older elementary and middle school students the skills they need for the higher-level math classes of high school.
Ryan Balow is the recruiter for both the Reading and Math Corps programs in schools in the 13-county southeast Minnesota area.
For reading, he said, the tutors, who are trained by Minnesota Reading Corps, meet with students individually for 20 minutes a day outside of their regular classroom. The math tutors meet with small groups of two or three students, again outside of their regular classroom.
Meeting outside the classroom, Balow said, means there are less distractions and the student can better concentrate on their reading or math goals.
Schools need to apply to get Reading and Math Corps tutors, he said. Locally, the program has tutors in Byron, Kasson-Mantorville and Triton schools.
Carrie Zemanek has been a reading tutor at the Byron Primary School and has worked with youngsters in kindergarten through second grade.
During the school year she met with the same student at the same time each day and got to know the child, she said, and could see the growth in their skills. Each child is tested on their reading level in the fall so she would know where they needed help.
For her youngest students, she said, she often needed to concentrate on the most basic of reading skills such as letter sounds and letter names and putting them together.
Meeting for 20 minutes a day, Zemanek said, allows the child to stay focused on the tasks.
“They come to my space for meetings, sit down and we review their goals, work for 20 minutes and then they go back to class.”
The program is very well structured, she said, taking into account each child’s abilities. The tutors, she said, are well trained by Minnesota Reading Corps before entering the classroom and work with reading specialists at the school.
Working with the children during the COVID-19 pandemic has been a challenge, Zemanek said.
The 2019-2020 school year ended abruptly and students missed key pieces at the end. The just ended school year also saw challenges as teachers, parents and students dealt with various ways of teaching from distance to in-person to hybrid.
 
In the end, she said, the Byron students performed well and caught up with what they might have missed. “The teachers can take most of the credit,” she said, adding that it helped that in Byron, and other schools in southeastern Minnesota, the elementary students attended school in-person for most of the year.
Byron students did a week or so of distance learning in the fall and a three-week period of between Thanksgiving and winter break. Even when they were in distance learning, she said, she continued to meet with her students.
The distance learning went better than she expected, she added, as the youngest understood the iPAD and could do Google Meets at their desk or the kitchen table.
“It was natural and they made progress. The kids just went with it. It was a lesson for me,” she said.
Zemanek said she spent two years as a reading tutor in Byron.
Although she will not be returning as a tutor in the fall, she said, she enjoyed the experience.
“I learned a lot, a growth mindset open to learning new things,” she said.
She explained she always loved reading and helping kids with their reading was one of the things on her “bucket list.” She had lived outside of Mantorville for 27 years and when she moved into Byron thought it was time to do this.
She heard of Reading Corps, she said, from someone she knew who was doing tutoring. Tutoring, she said, was very fulfilling.
The training given to tutors is comprehensive, she said. The first year she did intensive training in-person at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Because of the pandemic, she said, this year training has been by video.
“We were very well prepared.”
The program is always looking for tutors for both Reading Corps and Math Corps, Balow said. Tutors are currently needed for all three of the area schools.
The volunteer tutors are compensated by AmeriCorps, receiving a weekly living allowance, he said. It requires about a 10 month commitment, he said, and a tutor can choose if they wish to work three, four or five days a week.
Tutors include a mix of people from college students to retirees. There is no upper age limit for tutors, but they must be at least 18 years old and have at least a high school diploma or a GED.
AmeriCorps is a federally funded program he said.
Anyone interested in becoming a tutor can call Balow at 866-859-2825 or go to readingandmath.org.
In addition to the local districts, 19 tutors are needed in Rochester, he said.