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A MESSAGE FROM DIRECTOR CAROL H. RASCO

April showers bring May flowers, and they can also bring extra time to keep dry with a good book! If you haven't been to a public library recently, visits make great rainy day excursions. In addition to choosing from the wonderful books they have in their collections, many libraries offer programs for children and adults. Perhaps your tutors could organize a trip with their students to ensure that everyone has a library card.

If you have not already registered, there is still time to take part in a FREE satellite teleconference -- an "America Reads Tutoring Support Program: Delivering Effective Tutor Training," sponsored jointly by the Department of Education and the University of Vermont. I am honored to be the moderator of this program which will address ways to ensure quality training for tutors. I strongly encourage each campus with satellite capabilities to consider hosting a downlink - and invite tutors, faculty, administrators, community members, and more! The program will also be aired live on the Internet, April 26, from 1:30-3:30 p.m. Eastern Time. A flyer with more detailed information is enclosed with this UPDATE.

COALITION CORNER

Scholastic, Inc., the children's publishing and media company, has been a member of the President's Coalition for the America Reads Challenge since the Coalition's inception. Scholastic offers many terrific resources for tutors in work-study and other tutoring programs. In addition to thousands of high quality, low cost paperbacks, Scholastic has launched the Literacy Training Kit aimed to help tutoring programs. Complete with two Help America Read guides written by Gay Su Pinnell and Irene C. Fountas, plus 74 specially selected multicultural trade books, the kit could be a resource for anyone interested in setting up or enhancing a volunteer tutoring program. For more information on Scholastic's Literacy Initiatives or the Literacy Training Kit, contact Julie Kreiss at Jkreiss@Scholastic.com , or visit http://www.scholastic.com/.

Scholastic has recently announced that as part of its initial Internet expansion, Scholastic Network™, one of the leading Internet subscription services for teachers and students, will be made available to ALL educators free of charge beginning in September, 1999. Throughout the fall, the service will be enhanced to include content from many of the publishing divisions of Scholastic, plus rich resources and services that will enable teachers, parents and students to work together in new ways to improve children's learning. This may be an exciting resource for America Reads programs; for more information, contact Judy Corman at (212) 343-6833, Denise Treco at (212) 343-6899, or visit http://www.scholastic.com/.

ONE COMMUNITY'S RESPONSE TO FAMILY LITERACY

This past fall, the Greenville (South Carolina) Literacy Association, GLA, formed a partnership with the America Reads program at Furman University. GLA's mission is to ensure literacy in the community by providing reading, writing, speaking and math instruction to functionally illiterate adults and to adults wishing to learn English as a second language. Eleven Furman students are currently matched with children and families in one of GLA's programs, Project LIFE (Let's Involve Families in Education). All of the children in LIFE are from homes where one or more adults are receiving assistance with reading or English proficiency. Many of the children are reading below their grade level. The Furman's America Reads tutors have contributed hundreds of hours at LIFE over the year. According to a recent report, the tutors are especially gratified that they have not only helped people with their reading skills, but they have been able to share the joy of learning with their students. (They have also learned a lot themselves, no doubt). Kudos, Greenville!

If you are interested in learning more about family literacy, setting up a program, or partnering with an existing program, there are many resources available through the following organizations:

• National Center for Family Literacy

  Waterfront Plaza, Suite 200
  Louisville, KY 40202-4251
  (502) 584-1133
  www.famlit.org/

  Publishes training materials, videotapes and reports, and provides training and technical assistance in family literacy.

• Literacy Volunteers of America (LVA)

  5795 Widewaters Parkway
  Syracuse, NY 13214
  (315) 445-8000
  http://www.literacyvolunteers.org/home/index.htm

  Provides curriculum materials, program ideas for adult literacy, and best practices. Reading with Children, LVA's family literacy program, teaches parents strategies to help their children read.

• Parents As Teachers

  10176 Corporate Square Drive, Suite 230
  St. Louis, MO 63132
  (314) 432-8963

  Runs parent education programs that begin at birth.

• U.S. Department of Education

  Even Start Family Literacy Program
  Office of Elementary and Secondary Education
  400 Maryland Avenue SW
  Washington, DC 20202-6132
  (202) 260-0826 or (800) USA-LEARN
  www.ed.gov/offices/OESE/CEP/

  Even Start provides funds for family-centered education projects to help parents become full partners in the education of their children, to assist children in reaching their full potential as learners, and to provide family literacy training for their parents.

The LEARNS (Linking Education and America Reads through National Service) Partners' Winter 1998 issue of The Tutor focused on family literacy. It contains lots of helpful information on a variety of subjects, including definitions of family literacy, stories from the field, and more. To read or download The Tutor, please visit www.nwrel.org/learns/tutor.

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR LITERACY

The National Institute for Literacy (NIFL) was created in 1991 by a bipartisan Congressional coalition in response to the literacy field's request for a federal office that focuses solely on literacy. The Institute is building and strengthening regional, national and state literacy infrastructures, with the goal of ensuring that all Americans have opportunities to develop the ever-expanding literacy skills needed to face everyday challenges in the workplace, home, and community. One of their priorities is to foster leadership within the literacy field. Below are two NIFL sponsored programs:

• Literacy Leader Fellowship Program. NIFL provides outstanding literacy workers and adult learners from across the country with an opportunity to carry out year-long innovative projects of their own design in order to advance the literacy field. The Institute supports Fellows' work and disseminates their findings nationally.

• National Literacy Hotline and Clearinghouse. NIFL sponsors the only national literacy hotline and information clearinghouse (1-800-228-8813 or 1-800-552-9097 TTY). It responds to 25,000 calls per year for literacy information - including referrals to local programs for potential learners or tutors, and free literacy publications.

¡A LEER!

A professor at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, recently translated into Spanish The Reading Team: A Handbook for Volunteer Tutors K-3, published by the International Reading Association. She and her colleagues have set up an Argentina Reads tutoring program based at the university, and reports that things are going quite well.

AMERICA READS SNAPSHOT: CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY

Kathy, the America Reads coordinator at Cleveland State University, visited many schools and observed her tutors in action throughout the year. Recently it occurred to her that America Reads would be a wonderful experience to include in college students' portfolios, particularly for those interested in the education field. She decided to plan a "Portfolio Workshop," designed to show students that their experiences as tutors could be used to help them secure jobs in the future, and that they could do more than simply list it on their resume.

The workshop was facilitated by Sara, an America Reads VISTA Volunteer, and Amy, a former CSU America Reads staff member who is currently a first grade teacher. Amy graduated from CSU in 1998 and put together a portfolio her senior year. Using Amy's portfolio as an example, topics covered during the two-hour workshop included:

• What makes a good portfolio
• Writing samples
• Resume
• Experience pages
• Awards/Honors
• Community involvement/Special activities
• Letters of recommendation
• How and when to present your portfolio
• List of references
• Services offered by the Career Services Office at CSU

The students attending the workshop filled out a personalized Portfolio Worksheet - and identified their own course of action. Tutors who attended the workshop were given the "CSU America Reads" brochure to include in their portfolios.

The portfolios are of course not limited to the students' America Reads activities. Kathy suggested that experience pages are a good place to highlight literacy tutoring activities. For example, if the student is applying for a teaching job s/he might choose to highlight techniques and ideas they discovered as tutors. As another example, if the student is going into social work s/he might highlight an America Reads activity that focused on a broader spectrum of community involvement such as a family literacy activity involving parents, children and community members. Experience pages could highlight accomplishments using photos, a sample of an enrichment activity done with a child, a thank-you letter from a child or parent, a sample of a lesson plan, etc. Kathy also suggested that tutors obtain copies of any evaluations that are written of them from classroom teachers and principals. "If they are glowing...which most are, they are important to include," according to Kathy.

IS THIS YOUR FIRST UPDATE?

For many of you, this may be your first Federal Work-Study UPDATE. That may be due to the Department of Education and Corporation for National Service's project to update our database! In an ongoing effort to ensure that these UPDATES and other communications from our offices reach the appropriate person(s) on your campus, please let us know if you would like to be added to (or removed from) our mailing list. Please feel free to e-mail Jeff Gale at Jgale@cns.gov, or send us a fax at (202) 260-8114. This is completely voluntary on your part - we are just trying to communicate with you and your campus as effectively as possible. If you would like to provide us with updated information, we would appreciate having:

1. Your name
   
2. Your title
   
3. Institution
   
4. Address
   
5. Phone
   
6. Fax
   
7. E-mail

Remember - this is completely voluntary!

CALENDAR OF EVENTS

Below is a list of events and days relating to reading, service, and more. If you know of events you'd like to add to this list, please e-mail Laura.Wood@ed.gov or call(202) 401-8888.

• April is National Poetry Month, www.poets.org/

• April 19-23, American Educational Research Association (AERA) 1999 Annual Meeting, Montreal, Canada, http://www.aera.net/index.html

• May 2-5, National Tutoring Association Seventh Annual Conference, Orlando, Florida, http://nta.jsu.edu/

• June 6-9, 1999 National Community Service Conference, sponsored by the Points of Light Foundation, Las Vegas, Nevada, www.pointsoflight.org/

• June 26-29, 1999 Annual Conference, American Library Association, New Orleans, Louisiana, www.ala.org/

• July 2 is National Literacy Day (sponsored by Focus on Literacy, Inc.)

• July 25-28, National Resource Center for Youth Services Conference, Minneapolis, Minnesota, (918) 585-2986

• September is Library Card Sign-Up Month!

• September 8 is International Literacy Day

• October 28-31, 1999 SCALE (Student Coalition for Action in Literacy Education) Literacy Leadership Summit and 10^th Anniversary Party, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, www.readwriteact.org/

• November 1 is National Family Literacy Day, www.famlit.org/

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ABOUT AMERICA READS

The America Reads Listserv is a forum for interested parties to discuss questions and best practices regarding America Reads programs. To subscribe:

Address an e-mail to: majordomo@etr-associates.org
Type (in the text): subscribe americareads

Carol H. Rasco, Director, America Reads Challenge
Laura Wood, Coordinator, FWS/ARC Program
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue, S.W., Washington, D.C. 20202-0107
Ph: (202) 401-8888, Fax: (202) 260-8114
E-mail: Laura.Wood@ed.gov

Dr. Marsha Adler, Office of the President, San Francisco State University
1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132
Ph: (415) 338-6879, Fax: (415) 338-6885
E-mail mnadler@sfsu.edu

Jeff Gale, Corporation for National Service
1201 New York Avenue, N.W., 9th Floor, Washington, D.C. 20525
Ph: (202) 606-5000 ext. 280, Fax: (202) 565-2789
E-mail: Jgale@cns.gov

Toll free number for comments or ordering publications: 1-800-USA-LEARN or TDD 1-800-437-0833

For information on the America Counts Challenge:

Wendy Goldstein, U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue SW, Washington, D.C. 20202
Ph: (202) 401-3030, Fax: (202) 401-9027,
E-mail: Wendy.Goldstein@ed.gov

www.ed.gov/americacounts/

Toll free number for comments or ordering publications: 1-800-USA-LEARN or TDD 1-800-437-0833