Each year NHR conducts a parent survey to give our families the opportunity to provide feedback on their experience. Our parents are critical to our students’ success, and their responses provide insight into our impact and guide our efforts as we continuously seek to provide high quality programs to the New Haven community.
One parent succinctly summarized the two tent-poles upon which our mission rests: “The books and the people.” These things create an environment where visitors, students, parents, and staff always look forward to going—but you don’t have to take our word for it.
KEY RESULTS:
99% of parents agree:
“NHR staff understands my child’s educational needs.”
and:
95% of parents agree:
“My child has shown progress from being tutored at NHR.”
IN THEIR OWN WORDS:
“They care!!”
“My child lives for her days of tutoring; she has changed and learned so much from being a participant.”
“They help the children…[to] never get bored with reading;they help them see it as fun.“
“NHR has changed my child’s outlook on reading. She now likes to read and has improved tremendously.”
“They make my girls feel at home, and now they love to read.”
“My child loves it; therefore, she will learn more.”
“They make you feel like a family; everyone is treated with equality.”
We participated in the Great Give 2019! Thank you for your incredible support which gave us a total of $28,780 from 186 gifts and a match from the Lewis G. Schaeneman, Jr. Foundation! These funds will help our students fight the summer slide!
Thank you for your contribution and for spreading the word!
New Haven Reads currently serves over 550 students each week in our one-on-one tutoring program, where they receive guidance and support from over 400 dedicated volunteer tutors. Students work hard throughout the school year to improve their reading skills, and their work continues during NHR’s six-week summer program. In addition to the one-on-one tutoring program, during the Summer Session students can participate in an assortment of enrichment clubs like chess, arts and crafts, math, and science!
These six weeks in the summer are important to maintain the reading levels that our students worked so hard to reach throughout the school year. Studies show that students who do not practice reading in the summer start the school year off at an average of two to three months behind their peers.1 This achievement gap widens for students from low-income households, like 87% of our students: on average, they lose 20-35% of school gains over the summer.1 The majority of our students are already reading below grade level, so without reading practice over the summer, the achievement gap continues to widen.
(1) Kuhfeld, M. PhD. (16 July 2018). Summer Learning Loss: What we know and what we’re learning. NWEA. Retrieved from https://www.nwea.org/blog/2018/summer-learning-loss-what-we-know-what-were-learning/
NHR volunteer and sustaining donor, Stephane Gerard.
Of the many ways to get involved with New Haven Reads, Stephane Girard personally participates in a good number of them. He volunteered as a reading tutor from 2015 to 2018, and last year he joined the Spelling Bee committee. Thinking on his experience as a tutor, he said, “[The students’] motivation and personality make spending the hour with them a pleasure.”
He fondly remembered a moment when the word “entrepreneur” arose in his conversation with one student, and the questions that followed about what an entrepreneur does sustained a months long conversation that they revisited each week in their tutoring session. The student’s curiosity and drive to learn made Stephane think of his own experience as a non-native English speaker. When he was suddenly thrown into a predominantly English-speaking community, many people helped him to read in the new language so that he could do well for himself.
“With the ability to read comes a power of independence.”
His experience as a tutor led Stephane to join the ranks of NHR’s regular monthly donors, who help the organization expand and provide services to an ever-increasing number of students. In his charitable giving, Stephane seeks to promote information and education. He said that with New Haven Reads he knows his money is well invested, precisely because he has seen all the good that we actually accomplish in the lives of our students. These results help them on their way to becoming productive and independent members of society. “It’s not only a good cause, but a cause that has the means to achieve what it’s after,” he explained. “I’ve experienced it firsthand.”
When you walk through the doors of any New Haven Reads location, the whole operation seems to run like a choreographed dance or meticulously rehearsed play. Tutors and students work in pairs while the site directors distribute snacks and stand ready to help. Parents chat while they wait for the end of the hour, and the occasional teacher comes in to select books. All are able to enjoy afternoons at New Haven Reads because, just like a dance or theater performance, a lot of work goes on behind the scenes.
Much of that work on the volunteer side is handled by Keri Humphries, our Outreach Director extraordinaire. When she joined New Haven Reads in 2012, volunteer recruitment relied on word of mouth and the Bristol St Site Director doubled as the volunteer coordinator. Needless to say, this process couldn’t keep up with demand, and Keri quickly started to build the volunteer program from the ground up.
Keri responds to email from her desk at the Book Bank location.
The first change she made was to handle all volunteer intakes. She formalized the process, improved response time, and began building community partnerships to build the pipeline. Seven years later, Keri’s efforts have contributed to a significant reduction of the waitlist and she now manages two Outreach Assistants who help with intakes. Despite their hours, Keri is still the nearly-universal port into volunteering at NHR. During a typical day she responds to volunteer applications and processes paperwork in the morning. Then, in the afternoon she interviews potential volunteers – four to six a day during the busiest times of year! That may sound like a lot, but Keri says that meeting members of the community is her favorite part of the job.
Her work, of course, extends far beyond volunteer interviews and orientations. During her tenure Keri has overseen NHR’s move from “an Excel sheet with 900 names in it” to an actual volunteer database, which she calls her “pet project.” Additionally, she initiated an annual volunteer survey. Feedback from those surveys directly inspired her efforts to strategically expand tutor trainings, as well as to provide opportunities for connection through site socials and book club meetings.
Keri gives a new volunteer orientation.
Despite all of the ways she’s grown NHR’s volunteer program, the most difficult part of Keri’s job is the constant need for more tutors. Every time a parent signs their child up for the waitlist – which currently has 112 students – that’s another tutor Keri has to recruit and train. It’s a natural result of NHR’s growth and the high need for literacy support in local communities. Nevertheless, she remains indefatigable in her efforts. After all, each new tutor means that one more child can come off of the waitlist, and that’s what it’s all about.
For more information about volunteering at NHR, please click here.
