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ELON, N.C. (AP) — In 2008, in her first year on the education faculty at Elon University, Jean Rattigan-Rohr didn't think her class on reading methods worked very well.
The class, called simply "Teaching Struggling Readers," was all theory and classroom instruction, and Rattigan-Rohr wasn't sure her undergraduate students had really mastered the material.
So she went to her dean with an idea to put theory into practice: Could her students use class time to work one-on-one with young readers from nearby public elementary schools? And could this tutoring program also include the parents of these children?
That fall, 16 third-graders from Alamance County schools — and their parents — came to Elon for once-a-week tutoring sessions.
Since then, enrollment in Elon's It Takes A Village Project has grown to 400 students at five colleges in the United States. One of those sites is UNC-Greensboro, where Rattigan-Rohr got her doctorate. Another is a church in her native Jamaica.
At Elon, the largest Village Project site with 140 children, the program was so popular that it outgrew its former home of the main Alamance County library in downtown Burlington. Tutoring sessions are now held at a local school, a church and on the Elon campus. The Elon site of the Village Project also offers tutoring sessions in math, science and music because parents demanded them.
For the past two years, the Village Project also has offered a two-week summer camp, where children work on academics in the morning and fun activities in the afternoon — things like art, music and digital photography. This summer's camp, which attracted 75 children, wrapped up Friday.
The key to the program's rapid growth?
"It's the students. It's the parents. It's the teachers. It's the community partners," said Rattigan-Rohr, an associate professor of education and director of the Village Project. "It's all of us involved in this effort."
Rattigan-Rohr said she created the Village Project in part to do a better job of preparing her Elon students to step into teaching jobs. She thought her prospective teachers needed to learn more about how to teach reading. She also believed her students needed to learn to work with parents, something that most teachers don't experience until they're actually on the job.
To tackle both issues, Elon tutors meet with students and their parents one night a week for six or seven weeks during a semester. The sessions are free and last for two hours. They start at 5:30 p.m. to accommodate parents who work days or nights.
At the Village Project meetings, children work on their reading skills. Parents sit alongside, helping their children, working with the tutors and getting tips so they could continue the lessons at home.
"This is why we're successful," Rattigan-Rohr said. "We can depend on our parents to be there and be involved."
When Rattigan-Rohr started the program, she advertised it at several local schools. But the professor said she no longer has to do that: Word-of-mouth advertising fills the classes. The Village Project had a waiting list last year.
As the program's enrollment grew, Rattigan-Rohr recruited tutors in other academic departments at Elon. Economics majors tutor children in math, and college students in Elon's School of Health Sciences handle the science classes.
Other tutors include Elon professors and librarians as well as teachers from the Alamance-Burlington School System.
During the summer camp, Elon faculty members step in to help.
Tonmay Islam, an assistant professor of economics, had his group of eighth-graders pretend to start an ice cream cart business. He used the exercise to introduce the ideas of competition, profits and market research.
"I want to show them that this is a way to apply math to the real world," he said.
Early research on the program is encouraging. In two research journal articles, Rattigan-Rohr reported her students thought they were better able to work with parents after taking part in the Village Project.
In some cases, she found the program got rid of some negative stereotypes. Many of her students thought children had trouble in school because their parents didn't care about education. Rattigan-Rohr said her students found out some parents simply didn't know how to help.
The Village Project has made a difference at Newlin Elementary in Burlington, where 75 students took part during the past school year. Larry Conte, Newlin's principal, said those children are doing better in school, they have more self-confidence and they're scoring higher on state tests.
More importantly, Conte said, the Village Project is building a stronger community. Conte is so impressed with the program that he hopes to start a branch of the Village Project for preschoolers at Newlin in the spring.
"It's bringing our children, our mothers, our fathers together as families. It's a beautiful thing," Conte said. "It's incredible what this is doing for our kids."
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Information from: News & Record, http://www.news-record.com
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