Faith and learning
Members taking on commitment to assist second-grade readers
Shelby County Schools has announced a partnership with a faith-based network of volunteers that will focus on improving literacy.
Shelby County Schools Supt. Dorsey Hopson has announced a partnership with churches that will focus “scores” of congregations on 20 schools in the bottom 10 percent that need immediate help with literacy.
“We cannot do this challenging work alone, and appreciate the commitment these faith-based partners are making to our schools and our students,” Hopson said Thursday at Dunbar Elementary in Orange Mound.
Dunbar is an example of a school that is not failing but without help could slip into the bottom 5 percent, making it one of the lowest performing schools and eligible for the district’s Innovation Zone or for takeover by the state-run Achievement School District.
With the faith community’s help, district-trained church volunteers will focus on second-graders in each of the schools. The goal, if enough volunteers sign up, is that every second-grader will get an extra hour a week of one-on-one help.
The efforts are being coordinated by Shepherding the Next Generation, a Washington-based nonprofit group working in nine states to get people of faith involved in schools.
The partnership includes Bellevue Baptist Church’s Arise Network, Agape Child and Family Services, the Black Alliance of Educational Options, plus Brown Missionary Baptist Church, New Direction Christian Church and others.
There is no financial commitment. In- stead, churches or individual members will sign up through Shepherdingmemphis.org. They will be assigned a school and scheduled for volunteer training through SCS, which will also conduct background checks.
“There is an old proverb that says when spider webs unite, we can tie up a lion,” said Stacy Spencer, senior pastor of New Direction, complimenting the partnership that will allow big and small churches to work together.
The effort is based on SCS’s Destination 2025 goals: Eighty percent of high school seniors will graduate ready to be successful in work or college; 90 percent will graduate from high school and 100 percent of them will go on to more formal learning.
It’s not uncommon for a school district to have 1-5 percent of students needing intensive help with reading. In SCS, nearly 44 percent fall into the category.
Under the model Bellevue has used at Treadwell Elementary, teachers set aside two hours a week for outside tutoring. Volunteers provided 30 minutes of tutoring twice a week to every second-grader, splitting the classes in two and working in shifts. The gains, according to Donna Gaines, wife of the congregation’s senior pastor, Rev Steve Gaines, went from 34 percent of children reading on grade level at the beginning of the year to 73 percent at the end.
“Our desire is to help the children of Memphis be reading at grade level by third grade,” Gaines said. “I take this mission personally because I grew up in Frayser and attended Georgian Hills Elementary (one of the 20 schools). Because of that connection with Frayser, I have a love for my city and the children of my city.”
Most of the tutoring will begin in the fall.