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Library’s Literacy Program About More Than Teaching Reading
“We’re about changing lives,” Lenna Ojure said of the Rockbridge Regional Library’s Youth Literacy Program.
“If tutoring goes well, it really changes the life of a student.” The Youth Literacy Program connects volunteer tutors to students in need of reading assistance.
“We work with students in K-5 who are having trouble with reading,” said Ojure, who is the program’s coordinator. Selected by area schools, these students are then connected with volunteer tutors, trained through the library.
“We work in coordination with the schools. I have someone who’s my coordinator at each school. They talk to teachers, and they find the students who need help,” Ojure explained.
Most students come from the Lexington and Rockbridge public school system, but the program also works with students who are homeschooled or attend a local private school.
During the 2023-24 school year, 58 tutors provided over 1,000 tutoring sessions to 64 students.
“We provide extensive training for the tutors. We also provide them with all the materials they need, such as whiteboards, notebooks and paper. In addition, the library has a fund for gift books for each student in the program.”
Ojure sees this program as working in conjunction with the schools, providing individualized, one-on-one instruction that would not be possible in a classroom of 20 students. As students’ reading ability and confidence strengthens, they can become more engaged in the classroom.
Teachers and parents will often report seeing a change in the students who are receiving tutoring.
“Our program supplements the reading instruction provided by the schools. When a tutor works with a child and encourages them, they begin to become confident about their work.’
Ojure said. “And so I think the tutoring can give students more confidence in themselves and that allows them to then function better in school and get more benefit from schooling.”
Gail MacLeod, who has been a tutor in Lexington for 20 years, spoke of watching her impact in students’ lives far beyond the program.
“The interesting thing about being a tutor is that it’s not just teaching them the ABC’s, or trying to help them survive at school. It’s really trying to shape the rest of their lives,” she said. “Like, this one little girl I have, when I started with her in first grade, we were talking about something, and I said, ‘well, you know when you go to college, you’ll have to – whatever.’ And she goes, ‘I can go to college?’” “You’re shaping and opening doors for these kids that you don’t even fully understand and helping them to be able to succeed in the future. And also watching them grow into that,” McLeod said.
The structure of the program, McLeod believes, works to nurture just these kinds of relationships.
“The difference with what we’re doing – the teacher’s dealing with a room of 20 kids. We’re dealing with one. And as a consequence, we can be their friend and they can get to the point where they’re not embarrassed about making a mistake.”
“With me, it’s like, you can make mistakes with me,” she said. “And as a consequence, that opens the door for them to say, ‘I don’t understand this’, or ‘what do you mean by that?’” As students grow more comfortable with a tutor, that tutor’s ability to make an impact grows too.
“They feel that connection,” McLeod said of the students. “And that connection enables the tutor to make a difference in that kid’s life.”
“And that’s the end goal. Understanding vowel sounds, of course, is part of getting there.”
However, the COVID-19 pandemic made this kind of face-to-face connection difficult, and Ojure said that the program is only now recovering from its impacts.
“The pandemic was a bit of a disaster for this program, because the schools were closed, and it was hard to connect with students,” she said.
“I think with the pandemic, we lost connections and systems that we had established.”
An important part of this recovery has been recruiting more tutors to the program, to raise the numbers back to prepandemic levels.
“Our first goal would be to continue to recruit more tutors, and to get them trained well,” said Ojure. “We’re currently fine-tuning our training, trying to make it really effective, but efficient, so it doesn’t use up too much of people’s time.”
Ojure spoke of watching the program have an impact on tutor’s lives, as well as students’.
“The reason tutors keep doing this year after year, the ones that do, is because they feel like they’re really changing lives.
That their relationship with the children they tutor is really meaningful,” said Ojure. “They feel like they’re really making a difference in their students’ lives.”
To become a volunteer tutor or to learn more about the program, reach out to Lenna Ojure at [email protected] or call (540) 463-4324, extension 105.
