Remedies for readers

Reading Clinic partners with
area foundations to aid City school

TU’s Reading Clinic, The Citigroup Foundation and CitiFinancial’s Baltimore office pooled their resources to help pull one of Baltimore City’s most academically challenged schools back from the brink—in just over a year.

Waverly Elementary, which in 2001 was ranked among the worst of Maryland’s failing schools, shed that stigma a few months ago. With assistance from clinic staff, TU graduate students, employee volunteers and a $10,000 grant from CitiFinancial, reading scores will keep soaring.

Waverly owes its successes in part to Clinic Director Sharon Pitcher, who developed Project Urban Outreach to strengthen literacy instruction and achievement in City schools. Last summer she organized an on-site reading clinic in which graduate students in reading education worked with children, teachers and parents.

In the Summer Reading Clinic, CitiFinancial’s gift supported one-on-one assessment and instruction for 23 struggling readers in the morning, plus afternoon enrichment activities for all of the Waverly students attending summer school. It also funded professional development for eight Waverly teachers as well as volunteer training and enhanced parent involvement.

With the help of her colleague Gael Macnamara, Pitcher expanded Project Urban Outreach to the fall semester with another grant from the Baltimore Sun. The two members of the Department of Reading, Special Education and Instructional Technology faculty first brought Waverly students and parents to TU’s campus to undergo instruction. They conducted volunteer training for parents, who then took over tutoring children from the fall clinic.

The Reading Clinic staff saw the culmination of the their efforts this week with the official opening of Waverly’s Parent Resource Room, a permanent collection funded by CitiFinancial for parents who want to help their children become lifelong learners.

Now it’s on to two more Baltimore schools in desperate need of assistance. “We’re very excited to be working with two more schools this semester, Diggs Johnson Middle School (funded by Verizon) and Samuel Coleridge Taylor Elementary School (funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation),” says Pitcher.

“Project Urban Outreach gives us the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of children, families and very needy schools.”

Story by Jan Lucas/Photo by Kanji Takeno

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