CELEBRATING 20 YEARS OF LITERACY
READING ALL-STARS PROGRAM MARKS A DECADE OF SERVICE By Sarah Valerio
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n Saturday mornings, when many children are at home watching cartoons and taking the weekend off, their peers at Harriet Tubman Elementary School eagerly return to school, along with parents and volunteers, to spend time reading. The children gather at the school located in the Columbia Heights neighborhood in Washington, DC, on Saturdays as part of the Reading All-Stars (RAS) program. This year, RAS celebrates its milestone 10th anniversary. RAS hosts one-on-one reading sessions for approximately 75 elementary school-aged children with the goal of helping students read at grade level. RAS is part of the umbrella of literacy-promoting programs of 826DC. Although teachers can recommend that students attend RAS, joining the program is entirely voluntary. RAS pairs students from Tubman with volunteer tutors, many of whom come from the Junior League of Washington (JLW). Many participants in RAS tutoring sessions are English-language learners or speak English as a second language; all receive free or reduced lunch at school. JLW partners with 826DC on its Reading All-Stars program, providing volunteer resources. JLW RAS Chair Barbara Mickits says the “program serves a real need and its mission is so well aligned with our focus on literacy.” One JLW volunteer, Lauren Iannolo (RAS Vice Chair), cites RAS as “actually the main reason I joined JLW.” She adds, “I knew I wanted to volunteer in the Washington, DC, community in an ESL capacity after graduating, but wasn’t quite sure how to get involved.” As a student at Georgetown University, Iannolo had volunteered reading with students at Tubman through a different program. She discovered JLW while she was searching online for similar opportunities. “I chose RAS as my mini placement and the rest is history,” says Iannolo, now in her third year with RAS. Andrew Gilligan and Kalli Krumpos are co-leaders for RAS, organizing its programming, managing operations, and coordinating on-site activities, all of which they do on a voluntary basis. “We are so grateful for the partnership and support provided by the Junior League,” says Krumpos. “All of our volunteers are incredible people, but I think the JLW volunteers are especially impressive role
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models and mentors for our students. It’s so powerful for our students to learn from and interact with impressive, professional women, which helps encourage them to set big goals for their own lives.” Of the students, Krumpos says they are “so impressive, funny, creative and smart. They show up to school, on a Saturday, after being in class all week and bring lots of energy and enthusiasm.”
“[THAT] THE PROGRAM HAS MANAGED TO RUN FOR 10 CONTINUOUS YEARS DEMONSTRATES THE POWER OF THE MODEL AND IS A TRIBUTE TO OUR VOLUNTEERS AND PARTNERSHIPS.” Along with Krumpos, Gilligan has been with RAS since 2012. He has had the opportunity to watch kids grow up through the program. “We had our first official Reading All-Stars of the year, and there were multiple kids there who had gone through the program and now are in middle school and high school, excitedly signing up their younger siblings for RAS.” He adds that it has been “great to see specific pairs—a volunteer and student—read together for years and develop a really close relationship where the volunteer becomes like family to the kid and their family.” Krumpos says “[t]hat the program has managed to run for 10 continuous years demonstrates the power of the model and is a tribute to our volunteers and partnerships.”
