March is Literacy Month: Flushing Rotary Promotes Literacy

Flushing Rotary Literacy Projects, 2010-2011

Along with literacy projects involving book and monetary donations to our community, Flushing Rotary also has hands-on opportunities for service in the field of literacy.  Rotary Reading Recruits, which began a year ago, has 12 volunteers who take turns reading on Friday afternoons to a third grade class at Seymour Elementary School. This service was offered to all third grade classes in the Flushing School District, but only one teacher agreed to participate.  Our thanks to Jennifer Scherba for accepting our offer and for having such well-prepared students waiting for our visits.

Mrs. Scherba is also helping us design and implement our second hands-on project, a one-to-one tutoring program for those in her class who need extra help with reading.  This is a pilot program, whose success will be assessed by Mrs. Scherba at the end of this school year.  If she deems it useful, we will work on widening our volunteer base to include dedicated community members for the next school year.  Jennifer will conduct a training session on Tuesday, March 29th at 6:30 p.m. in Room 101 at Seymour Elementary.  Our goal is to have volunteers in place to begin the pilot program of tutoring on Wednesday, April 20th, and each succeeding Wednesday until the end of the school year, a period of 8 weeks.

Any Rotarians wishing to participate in either Rotary Reading Recruits or our pilot tutoring program are welcome; please call or e-mail Ginny Myers, or sign up at a membership meeting.  This is your chance to make a positive difference in a child's educational success.  Could anything be better?