Community Corner

Project Read: A Volunteer's Notebook

I spent a year volunteering for Project Read, and you can, too.

When I started regularly attending public meetings in South San Francisco as the editor of Patch, one of the first people I recognized was Holly Fulghum-Nutters, the program manager of Project Read. That’s because Holly was one of my teachers when I trained as an adult literacy tutor for Project Read in San Francisco the year before.

Two evenings a week for two weeks, our small class filed to the basement of the main branch of the San Francisco Library to learn about teaching techniques and learning styles. We heard from current students who gave us advice about how to be effective teachers and told us about what they were looking for in the program.

Project Read is unique because it’s a learner-centered literacy program. Every person who enters may be looking for something different—they might want to be able to read a storybook to their child, pass a driver’s license test or qualify for a promotion at work. Some learners will start out going over the alphabet, while others already read and write at a sixth-grade level. As a tutor, it’s your job to work with your student to craft a program that’s going to meet their needs.

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But Project Read gives you a lot of help. During the training, you work from a course book and supplemental materials that are chock full of exercises you can use as a tutor. When you’re done with training, you can contact the staff at any time to ask for help or suggestions. In San Francisco, you can even create lessons around the innovative literacy programs available in the Project Read computer lab and take home additional workbooks that they make available in the office.

After completing the training, I was paired with an advanced-level student who was taking classes at San Francisco’s Adult Learning Center, a free college for adults studying for their GED. He and I met weekly to practice reading, work on writing and structuring essays and do spelling exercises, which were his favorite. Tutors make a one-year commitment to work with their student every week for about two hours.

Find out what's happening in South San Franciscowith free, real-time updates from Patch.

I’ve had other experiences as a teacher, including teaching undergraduates in the mass communications department when I was a graduate student at UC Berkeley. But I found Project Read to be uniquely rewarding because of the opportunity to tailor lessons to the unique needs of one student. You don’t have to wonder whether all of the 30 students in your class understand the material; rather, you just ask the one student in front of you whether the lesson is working for him.

Project Read . The next tutor training starts April 21 at the Daly City Library at 40 Wembley Drive, Daly City. For more information about how to sign up and become a tutor, call Project Read at (650) 829-3871.


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