Adopt-A-School: reading to the kids

     (This is an article I wrote last month for our in-house monthly publication, the Terrace Talk. Thought you might enjoy it.)     
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     It is called the Adopt-A-School program, and it is, arguably, the major outreach project of Trinity Terrace residents.
     During the school year, we are connected with Western Hills Primary, our "adopted" school for weekly Tuesday-Wednesday morning sessions -- focused primarily on reading -- with selected first-graders.
     This is the third consecutive year that Trinity Terrace has reached out to those kids, and if you ask the 18 residents involved who spend one-on-one time with students, the consensus belief is: "We get as much benefit from working with those children as they get from us."
     And, as you might gues, the kids consider out residents their "adopted grandparent reader."
     Western Hills Primary (pre-K through first grade) is located in western Fort Worth, in the rough Las Vegas Trail area, which -- frankly -- is a lower-income, mainly minority part of town that has been in the news a lot recently.
     "This is a school with many needs and we are a community with many blessings," says Tricia Baldwin, Trinity Terrace's chaplain. "Reaching out beyond our walls helps both sides."
     In addition to material goods, what the school and its children need most is attention. That is what Trinity Terrace provides.
     "These children are sweet and they are wonderful," says Frankye Armstrong, who as chair of our chapel committee in 2016 was the program's main organizer and recruiter and remains its driving force.
     She is, says Tricia, "a [TT] resident who found a special place in her heart for these children."

Frankye and Joe Armstrong with one of
the Western Hills Primary students.

     Frankye says it is all the Trinity Terrace readers' connections with the kids that counts most.
     "It makes the kids feel important," she says. "They may not always remember your name [in the future], but they will remember how you made them feel." 

   "I feel like it is an important investment of our time," says Ailene Gibson. "Education is one of the most important things we deal with right now. There is not enough money being spent on it. ... "

      "It is something I can do to give back to somebody," says another reader, Diane Kessler. "Everyone benefits so much from it."

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     It is significant that the past two years, it takes a bus -- a Trinity Terrace bus -- to take the readers to Western Hills Primary (and back) twice a week.

     Because in the first year, all it took was one van carrying four readers.

     Then word got around, people noticed the readers coming back to our place smiling and talking about the program, and by the next year enough volunteered that a bus was needed to transport them to the school.

     After her first visit to the school, Frankye Armstrong decided to enlist residents to go to the school weekly to read to the children.
    "This is something that is the pride of my life," she says. "It was something I knew I could do, and wanted to do. But it is not about me. Please give credit to everyone else involved."

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     Key elements of the program:

     • Packets provided for the students -- books for reading, alphabet and math practice cards, the journal, a record of the student/reader history.

   • The school's teachers who select the students and organize the packets.

   • The school's teachers who select the students and organize the packets.

   • "Snack sacks" presented weekly to the school. The varying goods include macaroni and cheese, peanut butter and crackers, a box of cereal, instant oatmeal, breakfast bar, juice boxes, and pudding.

     • The school administrators -- principal Mrs. Sonya Kelly and vice-principal Dr. Panzia Pullam-Brown (main contact for this program).

     • Our people willing to give their time.

     Each reader is assigned the same two students per visit -- pending changes, which may be frequent -- and spends about 30 minutes apiece with them.

     On those Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, one of the Trinity Terrace buses leaves here at 8:30, and school officials are notified of which readers are en route. Upon arrival at Western Hills Primary, the school's outside doors are unlocked and readers proceed independently to the room to meet their first students.

     "The minute we buzz into that school," says a reader, "it feels clean and warm and happy. ... The kids are so happy to see us."

     "They just light up," says Bea Van Thyn. "They refer to us as 'my reader,' and you can hear other students in a classroom call out [to the student], 'Your reader is here.' "

     The students have materials they received from their classroom teacher (or a substitute teacher), and goes with the reader to the school cafeteria (or at times the library).

     After the first session, the reader and student return to the classroom, and the reader then moves on to the second student (most often from another class).

     Because it is a large school -- 240 first-graders divided into 12 classrooms -- and it is in a transient part of the city, perhaps a 50 percent turnover of students within the school year, there often is a lack of continuity in the student/reader connection.

     Also, for many of the students, Spanish is their primary language -- English the second language -- so there are three dual language (but primarily Spanish-speaking) classrooms. Which especially makes one of our readers who speaks and reads Spanish a valuable resource in the  program.

     Reading can be problematic for some of the students, so they are guided -- and encouraged -- by our readers. The school-made cards of letters and numbers are an aid, and the journal each student has is used for them to write or math problems, or for drawing pictures (many related to what was just read or about their family or the TT reader).

     The sessions finished, the bus on the return trip, our readers each day exchange stories. "There is lots of bragging on our kids on the way home," says Frankye, laughing.

     Gaylon Peyton has a good story to tell. Read on.

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     The project began with the "snack sacks," and then expanded.

     In the summer of 2016, Tricia Baldwin suggested to the chapel committee that it needed an outreach effort in the community and the idea she proposed was to adopt a school.

     Caroline Bell, the assistant for pastoral care at Trinity Terrace, had a connection to Western Hills Primary and made the inquiry about our place becoming involved.

     When vice-principal Dr. Brown asked, "Do you have any people that could read to our children?" the plan was put in place. It is of particular interest to Caroline, who is president of the board of Literacy Connexus, a non-profit organization that paves the way for churches to offer reading programs to children, especially needy ones.

      So a perfect match here. Plus, the men in the Trinity Terrace Tinkers' Den built 50 bookcases for Literacy Connexus' use.

      The first Trinity Terrace contribution was to the snack sacks (which cost about $3 apiece). When a sponsoring church dropped its connection, our the chapel fund began providing money to purchase sacks for some students who have inadequate nutrition on weekends.

      "It is hard to believe that one out of four children in Tarrant County have inadequate nutrition and that statistic is even higher at Western Hills Primary," says Tricia Baldwin.

     The Tarrant Area Foodbank provides a limited amount of snack sacks, so Trinity Terrace is part of the supplemental supply. The sacks are made by volunteers at Arborlawn United Methodist Church, then picked up and delivered to the school by Caroline Bell each week.

      Trinity Terrace also helped make available extra winter coats and shoes for children in need.

      The TT chapel fund also helps pay for a luncheon for the school's teachers each spring on "Teacher Appreciation Day."

      In return, Western Hills Primary sent its school choir to Trinity Terrace for a concert, and the third annual visit will be March 28, with some 70 kids participating and our main auditorium expected to be full.

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Diane Kessler (right): "Everyone benefits
so much [from the program]."

     Diane Kessler says she was "lucky" to work with the same two children all of her first year as a reader. "We had a real good connection." It is not as strong a bond with her two this year, "but you don't know all that much about these kids' lives."

      She enjoys watching her students work with their flash cards. "They make them like dominoes, like to connect the colored dots, or play games with them," she says. "They'll start to count them, or put things together. Some just like to scatter them."

     "Some kids are just so cute," says Ailene Gibson, "but some are wigglesome." Thus, they are a little more difficult to teach.

Gaylon Peyton (left) received his own reading lesson.

     And Gaylon Peyton can relate. In his first year as a reader, "I got two boys who cannot sit still; you cannot rope them in place," he says. But one of them provided his story.

     The book the boy selected to read from his packet was about dinosaurs (kids do like their dinosaurs).

     When they began reading, "I could not get my tongue around the word 'Tyrannosaurus' [Rex]," Peyton said. After he tried several times, the boy stopped him and said, "This book is too hard for you," and, Peyton added, "He went and got a different book for us."

     That was a story for the bus on the ride home.

     Peyton says that he is "starting to see some advancement" by his first-grade readers. He is "teaching them phonics a little bit so when they see a word, they can sound it out."

       One of his boys is "a hugger," who for example gave a big hug to the school librarian, and when Peyton was pleased with the boy's effort and put up his hand for a high-five, "he instead gave me a big hug."

     Just as Trinity Terrace's volunteers readers have given a big hug to Western Hills Primary's first graders.

     "There is nothing like the joy that is evident on the faces of both the students and readers each time they come," says principal Sonya Kelly. "We are truly blessed to have them as a part of our school family." 

     The connectiont is not all about reading or math.

     Some days, our readers will say, kids are shy or withdrawn, or not focused, and maybe just want to play games. Some days, family/home issues -- a lack of meals, sharing a bed or a mattress on the floor with siblings, or sleeping on the floor -- are a topic of discussion.

     It is not intended to be a counseling session, but being a willing ear is part of the task.

     "Some kids may not need the reading help as much as others," Frankye Armstrong says. "But the real need is for attention. ... We are really engaged with those kids [during the sessions. You have to know how much it means to those kids."

      And to their grandparent readers.