Our Program on Tuesday, March 19th was Mary Fritz form the East Side Learning Center. Mary is the Executive Director and said she tried to retire 12 years ago and has stayed on due to her passion and commitment to help children to read. She is very direct and not afraid to speak her mind! She was a farm girl r
aised just outside of Worthington is from a bid family with seven brothers and 7 sisters. She was educated in a small school and went on to college, grad school and then a specialist degree to be a principal. Was a principal in Minnetonka and lived in St. Bonifacious. She explained that she loved being with kids her entire life as they make you feel young!
aised just outside of Worthington is from a bid family with seven brothers and 7 sisters. She was educated in a small school and went on to college, grad school and then a specialist degree to be a principal. Was a principal in Minnetonka and lived in St. Bonifacious. She explained that she loved being with kids her entire life as they make you feel young! She then turned her attention to the East Side Learning Center and explained that we “Do only reading!” She stated that, “66% of 3rd graders in St. Paul are not reading at grade level.” She explained that it is a lot more than a Covid problem, “It’s about how we are teaching them to read!” She likened it to building a house and the first basic thing is a good foundation. Children need the basic elements of reading first to become successful readers. Mary says emphatically, “They are not getting the foundation of letters, sounds and decoding!” Mary gave the example of a 2nd grader that wanted to get up in front of the class to read but since she couldn’t read she looked at the pictures and made up her own story. There is not a quick fix for not being able to read and non-readers need to be taken back to the basic phonics and build their way back up learning the long and short vowels and other basics. Statistically 55% of students have difficulty learning to read but 95% are capable if they are taught properly.
Mary’s conviction is that teacher preparation has gone away from the basic foundations and phonics with a mishmash of instructional methods that don’t work. Add to this the fact that a majority of these children (90%) come from homes below the poverty level where parents don’t read to their kids because of working several part time jobs or are immigrants few English speaking or reading skills. East Side’s job is to help them get up to speed in reading. East Side uses volunteers to work with children. They come from local churches, residents, senior citizens, and 30 college kids. They meet one-on-one four days a week for 30 minute sessions so they are getting individual attention for two hours a week. As a result students are doing much better because they are establishing rapport with their tutor, then working on basic needs at their individual reading level and then debriefed at the end of the session. Many volunteers do three and four hour shifts working with kids. Kids get acquainted with their tutor; work at their own level on basic skills, fluency and comprehension.
Mary ended by thanking our club for the books from our book drive and our donation. She noted that it is very important that students get these books to take home and read because in most cases there is not extra money to buy books for the family.