This past Monday and Tuesday (February 25th and 26th), I had the pleasure of attending the 2013 Building a Grad Nation Summit here in Washington, DC. The conference was focused on increasing the high school graduation rate by bringing people together to discuss solutions and plan for the future.
At the conference I had a chance to attend several breakout sessions focused on my work in the Neighborhood Tutoring Program. One of the sessions was titled “Producing First Rate Readers by Third Grade” and talked about the importance of school attendance, school readiness and summer programming in allowing third grade students to read at grade level. We discussed the many reasons and factors that contribute to children not yet reading at grade level by 3rd grade and we brainstormed some potential solutions.
While listening to my fellow attendees talk about the problem and its potential solutions, I couldn’t help but think about the many students we work with in the Neighborhood Tutoring Program and their volunteer tutors. Each week, they come together to focus on this mission of helping students who have fallen behind. Tutoring programs like FLOC’s are unique and are truly focused on solving the issue at hand – we want all of our students to be reading at grade level. We work hard to ensure that tutors and students are on track to accomplish this goal.
I am thankful for my time at the conference, but I left feeling even more grateful to be a part of something as important as the work we do here at FLOC. Now to start planning our summer program….
(Lana Slack is the NTP Program Manager at FLOC).
