Tuesday, September 5th, 2023

I arrived at the Boys & Girls Club (South End) with two ideas in mind: “Don’t be scared

of the kids,” and “Don’t make the kids scared of you.” It was peculiar walking in there in my

green uniform T-shirt seeing all of the kids running around smiling and giggling amongst each

other. I feel almost alien, I don’t recognize myself when I stand with the adults and teachers, but

I can feel myself towering over (some of) the children too. When I walked into the rooms, rooms

that I had seen before during an orientation, I had intense feelings of excitement and nerves

coursing through me. Lyann, my mentor, said that my first task was getting to know the children

and pitching the book club idea to as many kids as possible. It was hard at first. Izabella and I

were quite shy, circling the room, smiling at the students, but not yet able to talk. We kept trying

to find kids that looked approachable, but to them we were authority and they would grow quiet

as we walked by. We decided to change our approach, and we split off to talk to various kids on

our own. My “AHA” moment was when I spoke to two little girls, 6 and 7 respectively, and I

found out that they didn’t know how to read yet. When I asked around, more and more children

around that age reported being unable to read yet or having very low proficiency. I spoke with

the Academic Success & Workforce Readiness Director, Catalina Pagan and she said that this

was a common theme amongst many of the younger kids at the club. I knew immediately that we

had a lot of work to do. However, the prospect of teaching these kids the reading skills I’ve

carried with me all these years made me much more excited for the future of my project.
Tuesday, September 12th, 2023

I made a point to interact with some of the older children as well today. The 10 to

12-year-olds don’t enjoy reading, and they see me as boring for suggesting that they join our

book club. A young girl approached me after I gave my spiel and told me “You look old, like, 20

years old.” Another kid asked, “Do you guys live under a rock?” when I talked about my love for

reading and how it has influenced my project. I don’t know how to reach these kids and level

with them in a way that piques their interest. I got a list of kids who signed up, both willingly and

were pressured by their peers (finally, useful forms of peer pressure) to sign up for the book club.

The younger kids want to be able to read and understand, but they lack the fundamental tools to

start, while the older kids, however, have the tools but lack the enthusiasm to wield them. It will

be a challenge for Izabella and me to make activities and lesson plans that match the reading

level of the students, but we are looking forward to starting to create them.

Thursday, September 14th, 2023

I didn’t do much today. I mostly spent time convincing students to be part of the book

club. My “AHA” moment came pretty quickly today though, as I realized just how many kids

were interested in learning how to read/ how to understand what they read. I thought that it

would take me weeks to get a group of interested students, but it took me about fifteen minutes.

Once we got them together it was time for me to introduce myself. I gave them my spiel about

who I was, my age, my reason for being here, and what I wanted to contribute to their education.

They mostly got hung up on my age and whether or not I was in college. They were mostly
respectful. I think the biggest challenge with them is going to be teaching them what a relevant

question is, and how to ask one at appropriate times to allow the lessons to run smoothly.

Thursday, November 2nd, 2023

I haven’t written here in a while, but I think I’ve made a lot of progress in my project.

Izabella narrowed down the book of choice for the 10-12-year-olds to Coraline. We taught them

about genres and what is unique about each one. It felt good to make some headway with the

kids, and by teaching them about genre we were able to teach them specific ways to analyze text

based on the genre of the story. For example, Coraline is a horror story, so we explained to them

what theme and mood are and how they can impact a story, like how the theme is appreciating

what you already have, and the mood is eerie and creepy. They were very receptive to our

instructions, but we had to curb a lot of disruption from select students. I think I appreciate the

students who, despite not necessarily enjoying reading, are willing to participate because they are

interested in the group activities and the books. We also finally got them to ask 3 relevant

questions per session. This gives me time to work through the lesson rather than being

interrupted with questions that aren’t urgent. The 6-9-year-olds have had a few more obstacles

than we expected. Their attention span is a lot shorter than that of the older students, and this

makes it hard to keep the lesson going when everyone gets distracted. For the little ones, I am

trying to make it so that they feel comfortable with reading out loud and asking questions about

what they are reading. Studies show that reading out loud improves comprehension and

confidence, so that is what I want to focus on first. I don’t want the kids who don’t know how to

read to feel discouraged either, so instead of making kids read, I ask for volunteers. This makes it

so that many kids want to participate and those who don’t know how to read well feel more

comfortable with participating, even if it means that Izabella or I will have to help them out with
bigger words. We are reading Smile by Raina Telgeimer and the kids are enjoying the comic

book style of the story, especially the onomatopoeia.

Tuesday, November 21st, 2023

Over the past few weeks, I have taken time to thoughtfully plan out exactly what I want

the kids to take away from each lesson. When I planned for today's lesson, I realized that the

students weren’t making connections with the story in the way that I wanted to. I thought a lot

about how I wanted them to make connections between Smile, themselves, other stories, and the

world around them. To expose them to another story that also deals with themes of developing

self-confidence so they can begin to form connections, I read Gustavo the Shy Ghost to them,

which is a picture book that is easier to understand for the younger readers in the group. It also

centered on Hispanic fictional characters, and since the majority of the kids understood, spoke,

or were able to read in Spanish, it was much more attainable than an English text such as Smile.

After reading the book, we talked about times when we had felt shy like Gustavo. When every

child was able to say a time that they felt shy, I explained to them what a text-to-self connection

was. I could tell that they understood because they began relating to Raina (the protagonist of

Smile) and discussing aspects of their own lives that they could relate to in Smile. I loved seeing

them understand Smile, be interested in the story, and understand it enough to be able to discuss

it. It reminded me a lot of when I first started reading and I first started seeing how much books

could change my perspective on myself and others. Watching them intuitively understand the

themes of both books by relating them to themselves helped me see the difference I was making

in these kids. At the end of the lesson, an eight-year-old girl told me that she took a reading

assessment at school and scored above average for the first time after having only scored met or

below on her tests. She hugged me and told me that she made inferences and predictions and was
able to understand the story better. It made me emotional because I could recall being her age

and first making my breakthroughs with reading comprehension, and it felt very full circle.

Tuesday, December 13th, 2023

After having a long conversation with my mentor, we concluded that I wouldn’t be able

to finish Smile with the 6-9-year-olds because, with the change in the semester, many students

are leaving the Boys and Girls Club in the spring, including the majority of the students I am

currently working with. To offset this, I will be teaching them about theme and mood, and we

will flip through the rest of the book together as a group so that they know how it ends and that

will be my last day “teaching.” We came up with an idea so that Izabella and I can continue to be

connected to the club. Izabella and I wanted to leave the club with something that could continue

to spread the joy of reading to students who may not have access to it. This inspired us to want to

create a “Give-a-book, Take-a-book Nook.” The idea is that Izabella and I will donate our old

children’s books and students can take them and donate books in return to keep the shelf stocked

up. This means a lot to us because the first books we ever got were from a similar donation bin

outside of our local CTown. The next phase of my project is coordinating a

Read-Across-America contest at SMSA, and giving the Boys and Girls Club resources to do the

same. Read-Across-America month was always my favorite time of year, because it gave me an

incentive to read more than usual, and it was always marked with lots of happiness and fun for

my friends throughout my school. Read-Across-America provides students with incentives to

pick up books they enjoy, which is the premise of my project. This is a scary step to take, as the

Boys and Girls Club and I will no longer be working together as regularly as before, instead, we

are taking a more remote approach to influencing the community. I have high hopes for the

“Give-a-book, Take-a-book Nook” and the Read-Across-America activity because I know how it
has made a positive impact on my life, and I am excited to see how it will positively improve my

community as well.

Friday, Dec 22nd, 2023

Today was my last full day at the Boys and Girls Club. My holiday gift to them was the

“Give-a-book, Take-a-book Nook” which I was excited for them to see. I was quite proud of how

most of the kids I worked with who started the year out refusing to touch a book let alone read

one, were now jumping at the chance to read some of the books I had donated. Izabella and I

began our reading journey with donated book bins, and being able to provide kids with free

books they can enjoy, and a space for them to provide other kids with their own donated books

made this experience come full circle for me. Not to mention that building the shelf yesterday

reminded us of when we got to build our first bookshelf, and how fulfilling it was to get to

collect books that we enjoyed. I look forward to coming back once a month to see the kids and

talk about bringing the Read-Across-America activity both to the Club as well as to SMSA

Tuesday, Jan 9th, 2024

After having spent a semester with the Boys and Girls Club, working with the children

and staff to help the children with their reading comprehension, I have much to reflect on. I think

that most of what I did with the kids was successful. I got through all of my lessons without any

major problems, and they seemed to enjoy my way of teaching reading to them. Most of my

lesson plans were a bit too long, but the students enjoyed them. They especially enjoyed making

predictions and continued to employ the prediction strategies that I taught them for the rest of the

year. My lesson on theme was also a hit with the kids, as they wanted to look for a theme in

every story we read, and they were very interested in learning what theme was and how to find it.
Overall, I think the way I structured my lessons, with a mix of hands-on activities and guided

reading instruction, really helped them to not only be interested in what I was teaching but also

want to learn more. I am most proud of the moments when students would tell me about how my

class was improving their reading in school, or when a shy reader found their voice in the

classroom, as it made me feel like I was making a difference in their lives.

Despite all of the great things that came from this part of my project, there are many

things I wish I could have done differently. Due to the Boys and Girls Club activity schedule

being hectic, I could only come in during two days of the week to work with them, meaning that

half of my lesson time would usually be spent reminding kids of things we had learned the last

time we met up with each other. If I could have changed anything about my schedule, I would

have gone three days a week to the Club to teach the kids. Another thing I wish I could have

done differently is to go through the materials I had planned more quickly. If I hadn’t spent so

much time at the beginning of the semester playing reading-themed ice-breakers with the kids,

we would have been able to talk about character development and even the hero’s journey,

concepts which I feel the kids already knew intuitively and would have learned with ease. As

much as I wanted to get to those topics, I am happy I got to know the kids well, and they felt not

only comfortable learning to read with me but also became more comfortable helping each other

with their reading.

As I am entering the second semester of my high school career, I am very proud of what I

have accomplished in the first, both in my personal and academic life. Working with the Boys

and Girls Club has really made me look at learning and public speaking in a new way, and I have

a newfound respect for my teachers and myself. I am most excited to begin planning for the Read

Across America Event here at SMSA, and I cannot wait to share the joys of reading within my
own school community. I am excited about what the new year and semester have in store for my

project.

Thursday, March 7th, 2024

Izabella and I finally got to sit and talk with Mrs. Ambroise about our Read Across

America activity here at SMSA. We had a lot of productive discussions about what we wanted to

do as a reward, what we wanted the students to take away from the competition, and how we

wanted the contest to play out. My biggest problem was that it couldn’t say “Read Across

America.” Since Read Across America is a movement that celebrates Dr. Seuss’ birthday and his

endorsement of reading I felt like that title would not be appropriate for our activity.

Dr. Seuss has a legacy of racism and discrimination against social minorities, so to ensure

that all SMSA students feel celebrated while reading, we chose to call it “Read Across SMSA,''

instead. For the bingo card, Izabella and I wanted to include lots of different tasks for students,

but we wanted to encourage them to read books from diverse perspectives. Our AHA moment

came when we had the idea to give students tasks to read books with characters who were

LGBTQ+, written by women, with characters or authors who were people of color (POC), or

books with fantasy, dystopian, or historical settings. Now that we had our idea, we were ready to

execute it. We designed our bingo cards and cut out more than 400 (Izabella and I used my

access to the UCONN printer in their library in Farmington). We spoke with our mentor Ms.

Garcia about our plans and once she gave us the green light, we were ready to pass out the cards.