An Eye-Opening Community Night with TTP

I have not visited my charter school yet but I have had two “first” experiences with my DC Reads sites. The most interesting was last semester when I volunteered for Turning the Page (TTP). TTP is a family based program which hosts what they call “community” nights. Parents and children sit down for a dinner. Then the parents go with session leaders to discuss ways in which they can help their children with school. The children stay with the volunteers and read. The children then get to take home a book to add to their personal library.

This plan sounds great in theory. In reality TTP lacks any structure at all which makes it hard to get things done. Once the parents and TTP employees go upstairs for their sessions the 8-10 volunteers are left with a cafeteria full of 30-40 screaming children that are making laps around the cafeteria. After the volunteers and I devised some sort of “round up” plan, we divided the children into grade levels which ranged from pre-K to 6^th grade.

Two other girls and I sat a group of about 10-12 first through third graders down. Only the kids closest to the book were really paying attention and the rest of the kids were so wild, I grabbed another book and took some kids that were at the end of the table. I was reading with second and third graders that were reading at a kindergarten or first grade level. They had trouble sounding out “don’t.” I was shocked, I had heard about it before—that was why we were there—it was just so different to have that child I had heard about sitting right next to me. In addition to the shock I was so angry that disparities like this could even exist. Yet they were very eager to read, which made me happy but again mad—I was thinking here are these kids who are so eager to read, yet they are being denied the opportunity.

Lastly, for half of the time we had with them the children were instructed to put their books down and color- yes color. Two of the girls I was reading with did not want to stop reading the book so I finished reading it with them…even though it was cutting in to their coloring time. Again I was angry—these kids are getting priceless time to sit down and read with someone and they are coloring.