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Woodside Reads with help from Rotary
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Neighbors | Grace Wyler .Travis Ford, a second-grade student at Woodside Elementary School, plays a reading game with his Woodside Reads mentor Betty Hatfield.
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Neighbors | Grace Wyler .Jazmine Telfair, a second-grade student at Woodside Elementary, works on her reading skills with her Woodside Reads mentor Sandra Schrode.
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Neighbors | Grace Wyler .Woodside Reads mentor Rich Murray helps his mentee, second-grade student Adin McClendon, sound out words in his book.
By GRACE WYLER
gwyler@vindy.com
Kathleen Kane, a former teacher, is dedicated to helping the students at Woodside Elementary School learn to read and form lasting friendships with a caring mentor.
Kane is the director of the Woodside Reads mentoring program, which matches reading mentors with first-, second- and third-grade students who would benefit from additional help and encouragement.
Students have weekly sessions with their mentors, where the pairs read books and work on language arts games. The sessions are designed to help students with reading, writing, listening and thinking skills.
Through one-on-one instruction students also form a relationship with an attentive adult, Kane said.
“I have truly seen kids blossom under an adult who cares for them,” Kane said. “They develop really special bonds and friendships.”
Most of the mentors have children and grandchildren and thus understand the importance of reading with kids, Kane said.
One mentor, Rich Murray, has been with the program since its inception in 2000. Murray, who has two daughters, said he believes that it is very important for children to work on their reading skills with an adult who cares.
“Each kid that comes in, you work with them for the whole school year, so you form a special relationship,” Murray said. He said he saves a picture of each student that he has worked with.
Woodside Reads was originally part of Ohio Reads, the state-funded mentoring program. When Ohio Reads was cancelled in 2006, Kane could not bear to have her students go without the one-on-one instruction that the program offered.
Kane found a willing partner with the Austintown Rotary Club, which has offered to fund the program for the last three years.
Many of the mentors are also members of the Rotary, Kane said, and did not want to see the program disappear.
“It’s one of those things that once it’s gone, it’s hard to get back,” Gary Reel, a mentor and former president of the Rotary, said. “It’s amazing how dedicated the volunteers are, it’s something that they like to do.”
Mentors meet with students in four 30-minute sessions every Wednesday. For information about volunteering, contact Kathleen Kane at 330-770-7703.