In the west Tulsa neighborhood where children attend Salvation Army West Child Development Center and Eugene Field Elementary School, something exciting is happening. Literacy is expanding from classroom walls into the streets. Following is an example of how AVID Readers is making reading exciting for everyone in a community as a way to increase literacy levels of an area.

Every week, students from Rocket Service Club at Eugene Field Elementary School, across from Salvation Army West Child Development Center, walk to the center and read books one-to-one with toddlers and preschoolers. Many of these children are older siblings to either children they are reading with or children being read to by fellow service club members, thus expanding reading into the neighborhood and individual homes.

Students from Job Corps are transported to the center to read books with the infants, toddlers and preschoolers, and both Job Corps and Eugene Field students say reading with AVID has helped increase their self-esteem and interest in children and reading. The students receive books and other incentives such as food coupons for volunteering and the children read to receive one book a month to keep.

In addition to the student volunteers, 15 adult community volunteers regularly read with children at the center. After becoming familiar with the center through AVID, one of these adult volunteers began helping the center work through stages of the accreditation process by organizing activities to involve parents and the surrounding community in the center.

One of these activities was the Salvation Army West Family Carnival, which brought over 100 parents, family members and children to the center for an evening of ring toss, barbecue and free books. For more information about efforts to improve the quality of child care centers in Oklahoma, visit www.ccrctulsa.org.

During the carnival, AVID set up a book table and gave 350 novels and children's books to parents and family members of the children and encouraged families to read with their children. Plans are underway for a summer bookshelf-building project that will involve volunteers leading parents and their children in the construction and painting of shelves for their home libraries.

At Eugene Field Elementary School, Federal Work-Study students from Spartan School of Aeronautics read to children participating in the FAST (Families and Schools Together) program and give them books to keep. FAST is an eight-week evening program that brings together parents, children who are Eugene Field students, and their siblings to foster communication and help parents hone parenting skills. The Family Literacy Coordinator for the Tulsa City-County Library leads FAST parents in a read-aloud workshop and gives them children's books to keep. Many of the children served by FAST attend Salvation Army West.

Finally, AVID sponsors bi-monthly book giveaways in conjunction with Tulsa Library bookmobile stops at publicly assisted housing complexes in the Salvation Army West/Eugene Field neighborhood. AVID sets up a table and encourages children and adults in the area to select one book to keep and encourages parents to read with their children at home and check out books from the bookmobile. AVID gave away 100 books during May's bookmobile "Reading Celebration". Many parents comment that they would read more both to themselves and with their children if they had more books in the home. Every home environment should include books that are owned and books that are borrowed from the library.

In the future, a literacy-based after-school program in the Salvation Army West Boys and Girls Club similar to the existing program at the Salvation Army Red Shield Boys and Girls Club will round out this community-based approach.

"These are all our children.
We will all profit by, and pay for,
whatever they become."
James Baldwin

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