By Frances Bryce, February 6, 2020 — I am a Reading Buddy for third-grade students from Greenville School located on Chestnut Street. The program is staffed with a leader who is in the most ideal situation is a student with one volunteer each week for one hour. The volunteer sometimes has two students.
My session usually begins with the student sharing what they have done since the last session. They bring a book that they would like to read, often we share reading the story. I realized the kids in the program would excel if they did not attend the program. This is indeed an enrichment program for them and would benefit any child but would help a child when they don’t have the resource. My buddy has parents who could afford added resources in the child’s life, an area where volunteers are available to devote time to the child that is not is a school where the program exists.
I ponder how to improve education before and after they enter the school without the enrichment program.
Maybe a solution in the early grades [is] a system [where] the child would begin a class — math, reading, etc. as used in a college. A teacher [would] see that the child learns … each course before the next course is taught. A third-grade class with a teacher who teaches each subject that the kid (child) has to pass. This would prevent a child in the next grade not knowing what he was expected to have completed the year before.
