Gu Grant Helping Kids With Reading

Thu., Dec. 10, 1998

By Kevin Blocker kevinb@spokesman.com

Spokane School District 81 is taking full advantage of a $35,000 grant Gonzaga University received from the State of Washington Higher Education Coordinating Board.

The money was used to enable college work-study students at Gonzaga to help some Spokane elementary students improve their reading.

The Teacher Liaisons for Literacy project borrows eight Gonzaga work-study students to help develop reading programs offered by six Gonzaga faculty members.

The program involves students at Garfield, Linwood, Logan, Sheridan and Stevens Elementary Schools.

The students act as liaisons between Gonzaga’s faculty and local school personnel, said Mark Derby, a special education assistant professor at Gonzaga.

Derby and Sima Thorpe, director of GU’s Center for Community Action and Service-Learning, applied for and received the grant in the summer.

“The (work-study) students work on a distinct project under each professor having to do with reading and literacy,” Derby said.

From there, the college students take the professor’s projects into the elementary schools, he said.

For example, Heather Chilcote, a junior at GU, serves as Derby’s assistant. With the help of the grant, she tutors 25 students at Garfield every day of the week.

“She gets great work experience in her field,” Derby said, of the program, which utilizes undergraduate and graduate students.

Gonzaga professors Deborah Nieding, Janet Burcalow, Randy Williams, Tim McLaughlin and Kim Weber are also involved in the project.

The grant lasts a year and Derby hopes it will be renewed for the 1999-2000 academic year.

“Hopefully we can branch out to different schools; it’s a nice collaboration between District 81 and ourselves,” Derby said.

Evergreen musicians to perform

First through sixth graders at Evergreen Elementary School will perform a winter Christmas music concert at 7 in the evening at the Whitworth Cowles Auditorium.

For more information call Kathy Meredith at 465-6400.

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