Peer tutoring program fights childhood illiteracy

ROCHESTER — Early Saturday morning, a pair of Old Rochester Regional High School students sit with their elementary school counterparts. 

Pencils scratch at printed-out worksheets, blue and red plastic letters are scattered within arms reach, and the soft light of a lamp glows overhead.

Mattapoisett residents Sara Duane and Penelope Angeley spend an hour each weekend tutoring younger kids at the Learning Loft, at  565 Rounseville Road, to gain education experience and help improve their students’ reading skills.

Sara said she doesn’t mind the early mornings, because she looks forward to seeing her tutee and is proud of the work she does to prepare for the Saturday sessions. 

“I like seeing Emerson, for one,” she said. “We spend the week trying to come up with a lesson plan, so I don't really mind coming out in the morning, because we prepare ahead of time, and I think it's meaningful to come out and do this.”

Much of that preparation came with the help of Terri Lerman, who owns the Learning Loft. Lerman said the free 10-week peer tutoring program was a way to give back to the community through her for-profit company.

It’s also a way to prepare the high schoolers she employs for future jobs in teaching, if they so desire. 

“I'm trying to empower teens to make a difference, trying to reduce the cost for families and trying to demonstrate that this (peer tutoring) works,” Lerman said.

Penelope said she learned about the tutoring program through her school’s early childhood program, and it was a perfect match for her interests in language arts and becoming a teacher.

She enjoys teaching her student, second-grader Olivia, and said it’s been rewarding to see her progress throughout the sessions.

“I think it's really interesting working with children and helping them build up confidence with reading,” Penelope said.

Sara said she wanted to teach reading because it’s her strongest subject.

It’s also easy to track the progress of her student, first-grader Emmerson, as she watches him sound out new words and improve his reading. 

“With reading, it really feels like you're starting to make a difference, and you can see the progress too,” Sara said. “It's very cool to see how fast they're learning.”

The peer tutoring program is part of Lerman’s efforts to address a “crisis” of low reading proficiency among elementary school students in Marion, Mattapoisett and Rochester. 

According to the most recent MCAS data, 58% of third-graders in Marion — the youngest grade to be tested there — do not or partially meet reading standards, with 44% of Mattapoisett fourth-graders partially or not meeting the standards and 38% of third-graders in Rochester failing to or partially meeting state standards. 

While she aims to improve reading results in these towns, she said illiteracy is a problem nationwide. This problem is deeper than simply falling behind in state-tested metrics, she said. 

“If you can't read, you are powerless in our society,” Lerman said. 

Beyond making it difficult to find a job, she said illiteracy curbs people’s ability to understand the world. Writing and reading expose people to new vocabulary and ideas, and grow critical thinking skills, Lerman said. 

She previously taught English at Old Rochester, and left after 17 years to go back to school. Since then, literacy has remained an important cause for her. 

“It's a legacy that I can leave in the world,” Lerman said. “There's not a lot of other things I can change, but my students will be able to read because I gave them some confidence and some tools.”