Last year, Let’s Read! Literacy Tutoring Program recruited 109 volunteers to tutor 68 second graders across four tutoring sites. This year, we hope to recruit 130 volunteers to tutor 80 second-graders across five tutoring sites. We hope to continue to increase our capacity. It’s an intensive program: unlike enrichment, it’s not a little help for a lot of kids but a whole lot of help (58 one-on-one sessions by year’s end!) for a few. It’s not cheap, but we feel it’s worth it because it works; kids’ academic futures change course. Frequently.

But here’s the sad truth: that’s 80 kids out of the 4,000 that need it! I’m not exaggerating: there are around 11,000 second graders in Montgomery County Public Schools and statistically no more than 40% leave elementary school reading. 80 out of 4,000 is 2%.

There’s a wonderful story of a child on a beach where several thousand sand dollars have been washed up by the last tide – in the wrong wave at the wrong interval, so to speak – with no way to wash them back into the ocean. The child knows this and so he begins to pick up the sand dollars, one at a time, and throw them back into the ocean. An adult comes by and upon finding out what the child is trying to do declares: “There are thousands of sand dollars stranded on the beach; you’ll never save more than a fraction of them – what real difference are you making?” And the child points to the one he just threw back in and says: “I made a difference in that one!”

And he did! And we do! Big differences in the close to 150 students we’ve worked with over the last four years. Life-changing differences. But to the point of the adult in the story, it’s but a fraction of the need.

You see, we could keep doing what we’re doing for the next several years, we would make big differences in the academic future of a few, parents would be happy, tutors would find their work fulfilling, the community would praise our work, we could be, presumably, highly successful. . . and yet, the real problem would still be unchanged. What’s the real problem? The system is not working. We’re not teaching our kids how to read! We should be relying on after-school programs for recreation, special interests, affinity clubs, drama, art, music, etc. But reading? A program like Let’s Read! should never have to exist.

So, do we throw back sand dollars one-by-one or figure out how to keep sand dollars from washing up on the beach in the first place? Yes. Both/and. It’s the only way. We keep using extravagant resources of time, people hours, and funds to tutor one-on-one not only because that’s what struggling 2nd graders need but as a testimony to what these kids should in fact be getting in school; it’s a signpost of the progress that can be made if we really want these kids reading. At the same time, we address the system and how it can be changed to do its job.

How do you want to help?

Tutor? Training starts Sept 15. Sign up here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1eLYlLw0zFhswQf6c8s7iUlYg2OeTPLvgxxpmt8gD7OQ/edit?usp=drive_web&ouid=103955302387547694566

Support tutors? Host a dinner. Sign up here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090844ABAD2CAAFE3-52419330-dinner#/

Advocate for students who are getting overlooked? Email me re: next Advocacy meeting.

Don’t have time but want to support anyway? Make a donation: https://germantowngc.org/donate/

Band-aids serve a purpose. They help provide relief and protection while the body heals. Our tutoring program provides pathways to literacy for the few who receive help from us. Meanwhile, we earnestly work on healing the system.

Thanks for your support!