Hail to summer vacation?

It may be summer but many kiddos will be enjoying summer school in the mix!

The past three weeks have been eye opening for me. I have realized the extensive work that each of the staff members of The Literacy Lab dedicate to making their impact on the literacy gap. I have been a part of forming a lot of the major as well as minor parts of their after- summer school program set to begin on the 30th of June.

I started off the summer with formulating a theme to which the summer program will be tailored to. I came up with the theme — “Traveling around the world in one month.” For each of the five weeks of summer school there will be a set continent and then country which team leaders will focus on. I searched up different literacy based activities that all the students can focus on, various art activities, and literacy centers the students will be working with all summer.

It went from brainstorming, to researching, to compiling, to printing and organizing all of these activities. And next week I will be able to see all of my hard work implemented to help some beautiful children.

Throughout these past few weeks I have been shocked and humbled by the after- school program director — Altavia Ray. She is almost eight months pregnant and has been working her tail off to create this program in less than a month. She has staffed the program, created the schedules, created the enrollment procedures, organized the special events of the program, and so much more. She has such an admirable work ethic and is dedicated to helping these children improve or at least maintain their reading skills in order for them to have successful futures.

There have been times throughout this summer where the goal of the organization has hit me really hard. I got the opportunity to see one of the organization’s programs, the Metro DC Reading Corps. I shadowed a supervisor who oversees the Reading Tutor’s techniques to make sure that the children are getting the best reading intervention techniques. (My experience is detailed in the previous blog.)

It’s not every day that we think about the importance of literacy… probably because it seems like such a basic foundation. But that’s why it’s so important — it is the basis of everything else. When I was younger I had the opportunity of having reading specialists as well as ESL teachers. They helped me get the foundation I needed in order to be able to read the information required of me.

The fact that the organization focuses on kindergarten to third grade is so important because after that age children can start to go into a downhill spiral. They start to learn more and more through literature in all subjects — everything starts being taught out of textbooks. If a student does not have a strong foundation in literacy they start to lose confidence in themselves which means that they just give up and at times do not even bother to come to school.

I am rejoiced in the fact that I am able to help these children in whatever way that I can. I hope that what I have been able to contribute to this summer program will infuse them with confidence to reach for the stars in the future.