SMART to serve 45 students this year

Residents who will serve as volunteers in this year's SMART (Start Making A Reader Today) program gathered last Thursday at Sisters Elementary School for an orientation session.

Already teachers have identified 40 children in grades K-3 to participate in this year's program. This means that more than 40 volunteers will contribute to the program starting this month and continuing through May.

"I'll probably use about 50 volunteers, and I'm pretty close on that number right now" said Sisters SMART coordinator Erin van der Velde.

She noted that she always has a need for additional volunteers because so many volunteers who participate in the Sisters SMART program travel.

"I always have a need for substitutes who will fill in when people are out of town," she said.

According to van der Velde this year's original goal was for the program to serve 60 children.

"Right now I have the names of 40 children. I think we'll get up to 45, but the school seems to have fewer kids (this year)," she said. "Last year we served 54 kids."

Volunteers serve one day a week for one hour.

"It's an easy, well defined volunteer period," said van der Velde.

Even though the time commitment is not extensive, the program would not exist without its volunteers.

"They're what make it happen. It's their commitment that impresses me and their enthusiasm," she said.

The program "is about the magic that the volunteers bring to help kids love reading at a critical time in their lives so that when they need to read to learn they'll be able to read," said Ellen Valway, Central Oregon SMART's program manager.

Each student who participates in the program works with two volunteers, each of whom reads with the student for one half of an hour each week.

"The wonderful thing (for the child) about having two different volunteers is that 'there's two different people who care enough about me who value reading who give up their time just to read to me.' What an impact that has on kids," said Valway.

The children pick out the books they want to read.

"The child might read, the volunteer might read or maybe a combination of the two," said Valway. "It's up to the student. The student may say: 'I want to read this book.' Or the student may say: 'I'm really tired.' We all know how nurturing it is to just be read to," she said.

SMART is a statewide 501c3 non-profit organization. Nineteen schools are served in Crook, Deschutes, Jefferson and Klamath counties. The program originated in 1992 with four schools in Portland and four in Central Oregon.

"We raise 97 percent of the funds we need, and we pay for and buy all of the books that we give away. Every child in the SMART program receives 14 new, free books. We gave away 9,500 free books to children last year in Central Oregon. We're creating little readers, but we're also creating little libraries for those readers, and that has a huge impact because its not just the kid who enjoys that book but their sisters do, their brothers do; maybe they use it to help mom learn some English, or grandma comes and they get to share the book with grandma. It's this huge ripple effect," Valway said.

Valway told The Nugget that the program targets children who need extra literacy support, children who can benefit from a one-on-one relationship with an adult, children who are not likely to have access to books in their homes, children who are not served by other programs like Title I and ELL (English Language Learners) and/or students who have been in the SMART program previously. After a student is selected, parents are contacted for approval.

According to a study conducted by the Eugene Research Institute, a cumulative effect results when students participate in the program over a period of years.

"One in three Oregon fourth graders reads below their basic level," said Valway. "The research project showed that when they compared fifth grade students who had participated in SMART with similar fifth grade students, the ones who had participated in SMART were 60 percent more likely to reach their reading benchmarks than children who had not, which is a huge statistic."

For more information contact van der Velde at 317-3235.