Concern for children’s success puts fight against illiteracy into action

  KEITH ENRIQUEZ/Daily Bruin Senior Staff From left to
right, Mary Cong, Emily Allen,
Jashé Williams and Joyce
Liou are members of UCLA BruinCorps who work to tutor
children.

By Emily Allen, Mary Cong,
Joyce Liou and Jashé
Williams

Would you like to receive work-study, an AmeriCorps Education
Award and help children struggling in school? Well, my name is
Emily and I recently started working for UCLA BruinCorps as an
AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteer In Service To America) and I can tell
you how you can do just that. I’ve really enjoyed working
with BruinCorps and would like to share some of what I’ve
learned.

BruinCorps pairs UCLA students with children from East Los
Angeles and South Central Los Angeles through three AmeriCorps
initiatives: America Reads, America Counts and Jumpstart L.A.

These programs are designed not only to help children prepare
for educational success, but also to allow UCLA tutors a chance to
learn more about their community and the field of teaching. Tutors
work with children and gain valuable first-hand knowledge from
their mentor teachers. Thus, being a BruinCorps tutor offers a
rewarding and challenging opportunity.

BruinCorps begins with a pre-school component (Jumpstart) and
continues on through elementary (America Reads) and junior high
school (America Counts). This offers BruinCorps members an
opportunity to work with children in a variety of age groups. As a
Corps member you’ll choose the age group that interests you
and then work one-on-one with a child who needs your help.

BruinCorps members commit to working with their chosen program
for one to two years. This commitment allows Corps members to
create a lasting and significant relationship with their
student.

BruinCorps provides students with the opportunity to tutor, but
more specifically, the chance to do it effectively. BruinCorps
members participate in both childhood education classes and ongoing
BruinCorps training, where they are brought up to date on a variety
of different curriculums and teaching methods. This mixture of both
practical and theoretical knowledge prepares tutors well. All of
their jobs are important.

We all know that there are problems in the L.A. county public
school system. For instance, in 1998, 40 percent of the
third-graders in the county failed to attain the basic level of
reading. This was not an unprecedented occurrence. After all, in
1994, 70 percent of children in the United States fell below the
proficient level of reading on the National Assessment of
Educational Progress.

In response, President Clinton announced the America Reads
Challenge, an initiative that mobilizes public and private
resources to ensure that all children can read well and
independently by the end of third grade. In order to make this
initiative possible, President Clinton challenged the higher
education community (that means you!) to substantially increase the
number of Federal work-study students engaging in tutorial
services.

UCLA BruinCorps responded to this challenge by launching three
programs: America Reads, America Counts, and Jumpstart L.A. All of
these programs encourage family and community involvement in the
education of America’s children by creating collaboration
between trained reading professionals and UCLA tutors.

BruinCorps, located in the Men’s Gym, began during the
summer of 1997 in response to this national focus on literacy and
service learning. Its mission is to provide synergy between
community service and service learning efforts, to build
collaboration and partnerships between UCLA and the surrounding
community, and to connect community service with instruction and
research.

Since our programs are affiliated with AmeriCorps, a domestic
counterpart to the PeaceCorps, UCLA BruinCorps tutors abide by the
AmeriCorps pledge:

“I will get things done for America to make our people
safer, smarter, and healthier. I will bring Americans together to
strengthen communities. Faced with apathy, I will take action.
Faced with conflict, I will seek a common ground. Faced with
adversity, I will persevere. I will carry this commitment with me
this year and beyond. I am an AmeriCorps member.”

Our Jumpstart L.A. program focuses on pre-school children and
prepares children as early as possible for educational success.
Jumpstart is founded on three integrated program areas: School
Success, Family Involvement and Future Teachers. This program works
to build successful literacy experiences for children through
individualized instruction, and by engaging families in the
learning process. To date, more than 200 UCLA Corps members have
served in under-resourced communities working with 12 preschool
centers.

This experience of tutoring not only helps the children, but
also the tutors. Jumpstart Corps member Graham Russo said,
“The program is not only fun but also rewarding. Jumpstart
builds a lot of skills. You have to learn to work with your
teaching team and mentor teachers.” Jumpstart is a great
program for students who are interested in public service.

After Jumpstart the kindergarten through third grade component
follows. UCLA America Reads engages eligible Federal Work Study
students, and some non-work study students, in providing tutoring
services to children in grades K-3.

By enrolling in Education 193A at UCLA, students learn
techniques and methods to prepare these children to be literate by
fourth grade. One former UCLA America Reads tutor, Joyce Liou, who
now works as a BruinCorps Program Coordinator said, “It was
the most incredible and challenging experience I’ve had. It
makes me realize the depth of the problems our children can face
and the impact one caring person can make.

“But the benefits were not just one-sided. I learned as
much, if not more, from my students. It’s always refreshing
to remove yourself from the busy bustle of a college campus to see
the smiling faces of children who wait for their America Reads
tutor. I would do it again in a heart beat.”

UCLA BruinCorps America Counts begins this fall. America Counts
is a shift from elementary school and literacy to focus instead on
junior high school and mathematics. Advances in science,
technology, information processing and communication, combined with
the changing workplace, make it necessary for all students to learn
more math.

The basics are changing. Arithmetic skills, although important,
are no longer enough. To succeed in tomorrow’s world,
students must be able to solve real-world problems, explain their
thinking to others, identify and analyze trends from data, and use
modern technology.

Our first America Counts tutors will provide tutorial services
in math and science to students in grades 6-8. Tutors will learn
techniques and methods to prepare these students to be proficient
in math by eighth grade.

All of our programs work to prepare children in under-resourced
communities by enhancing their skills for educational success. And
I know that sounds great, but really the most rewarding part of
BruinCorps is visiting our various sites and seeing tutors actually
working with children.

Although our programs focus on literacy or math and science, the
benefits of children working and communicating with concerned and
caring adults are immeasurable.

A tutor once told us about a child who rarely spoke during
class. The child remained silent until the tutor discovered that
the child had a fascination with trucks. This discovery got the
child and tutor talking. The next week the tutor brought in a dozen
books on trucks from the library and their relationship with
reading grew from there.

Sadly in our crowded public school system, these simple
connections are not always made. So if you decide, you could also
be making this kind of difference in a child’s life.