Local literacy program looking for tutors to help children with reading, listening skills
When Kathy Sniffen was looking for a new volunteer opportunity in early 2020, the Modesto social worker stumbled upon a link to KidsQuest, a literacy tutoring program geared toward elementary and middle school students in Stanislaus County.
“The idea of spending time with a young person who really wanted to learn to read and spell better really appealed to me,” Sniffen said.
She signed up for the program in February 2020, and has been tutoring ever since. Sniffen meets twice weekly with her student, Noah, who she’s been working with since he was 11 years old. Two years later, they’ve formed a strong bond, Sniffen said, and are diligently working through the KidsQuest lessons.
KidsQuest is an offshoot of LearningQuest, an adult literacy program from the Stanislaus Literacy Center that operates out of the Stanislaus County Library’s Modesto branch. LearningQuest offers a variety of literacy services — from reading, writing and math to technology and work skills — to help adult learners achieve their goals.
The Literacy Center started KidsQuest in the fall of 2019 to meet the needs of students across the county who are struggling with reading skills. In addition to tutoring sessions, the program offers a reading and spelling academy for children in grades 4-6.
Catherine Ferrell, KidsQuest’s program coordinator, said that most of the students who join their tutoring program have identified learning disabilities, frequently dyslexia.
At KidsQuest, they receive free, donation-funded one-on-one tutoring twice a week, following a rigorous multi-sensory program to help them improve their literacy skills. Sniffen said that when she and Noah started tutoring, the first lessons focused on basic skills like identifying vowel sounds and what vowel pairs often fit together to form words.
Over the years, as they’ve progressed through the tutoring materials, the lessons have become more complex, and now she and Noah spend part of their lessons reading out loud from books he chooses.
Ferrell said the lessons provided by KidsQuest are sequential, and designed so that the student progresses through the material, and the tutor is provided with instructions throughout.
Tutors learn alongside students
Tutors at KidsQuest don’t need a certain kind of background, she said. The only requirements are being 18 years or older and completing a listening and pronunciation assessment to determine if the tutor can accurately differentiate and pronounce the different sounds in the English language. Tutors will then get a four-hour training from KidsQuest before they’re paired up with a student.
“We do have a lot of students who are in college, many of them are interested in becoming a teacher or (going into) social work,” Ferrell said. “We also have retired people, some are teachers but many are not. We’ve had doctors and nurses who have volunteered.”
The main thing tutors need to bring, she said, is an enthusiasm for reading and working with kids.
Sniffen said she was nervous about becoming a tutor since her own background is in social work, not education, but the way the tutoring lessons are set up gave her confidence.
“(The book) tells you what you need to do,” she said. “You’re not trying to figure it out. It’s right there in front of you; you can read it verbatim if you need to, and you’ll probably start out that way. Sooner or later you’re going to get your own kind of groove and you’re going to figure out how you’re going to work best with your students.”
Seeing her student progress over the two years she’s been with the program has been incredibly rewarding, Sniffen said.
Noah now enjoys reading for fun, in addition to gaining literacy skills for school. He and Sniffen are about halfway through the course materials provided by KidsQuest, and she said she looks forward to the time she gets to spend with him every week.
“We are really truly in this together,” she said. “I’m a good reader. I am a good speller. Those things were things that I was able to easily pick up. Noah’s situation is different. He has to work very hard at it, and I have so much respect and admiration for how hard he works.”
Ferrell said many tutors form close relationships with their students, and the one-on-one instruction means every child receives individualized attention. So far, she said, KidsQuest has worked with over 50 students from across the county, but interest is high.
To accommodate the need, KidsQuest is looking for new tutors — ideally up to 20 of them. Ferrell said those interested can contact her at cferrell@lqslc.com or find more information about the program on KidsQuest’s website.
Correction: This article has been updated to clarify how KidsQuest tutoring is funded. The program funds its operations through donation money.
To help fund The Bee’s economic development reporter with Report for America, go to https://bit.ly/ModestoBeeRFAThis story was produced with financial support from the Stanislaus Community Foundation, along with the GroundTruth Project’s Report for America initiative. The Modesto Bee maintains full editorial control of this work.
This story was originally published March 29, 2022 at 6:30 AM.
