 Partnerships between secondary institutions and public and private historically black colleges and universities are growing nationwide. Howard University is part of the flagship institution cohort that is leading this effort to make sure that the next generation of students receives proper training at the earliest levels possible today to talk about an innovative new tutoring experience and initiative involving Howard's work study students is Shakura Atomofnia. She's the executive director of Reading Partners DC and Melissa Knight, the associate director of Howard University's experiential learning programs to talk about this new initiative. So sisters, I appreciate you being on today. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. So this is an exciting program and as I mentioned, a lot of HBCUs are have have long work with lab schools, long work with with tutoring programs either led by students or institutionally. This is something that is specifically placing Howard students in K through four K through four programs with the with the specific goal of increasing literacy. So Melissa, I will begin with you. How does a program like this come about and how do you make the connections for this to be something that students can literally put on their resume as a as a work opportunity in advancement of their careers and the support of young people throughout Washington DC. Yeah, we are super excited for this partnership, more specifically, like you mentioned, this is something that students are going to be able to put on their resume to pipeline them into the workforce. So essentially, one of the pillars here at Howard University, a part of our Howard program is serving the community. And what we wanted to do was create strategic partnerships with organizations in the Washington DC area that what is essentially increase the educational outcomes of students in K through four K through 12 institutions. So we're really excited about this because our federal work study students will be able to come on with reading partners to serve as tutors to help them to advance that reading literacy. So we're really, really excited about it. And Shakura for for reading partners DC, obviously, this is a major thing to get more more bodies involved and more capable bodies involved of getting young people caught up on reading levels and to be inspiring and inspired and excited about learning and literacy. But but how much of a big deal is this for your institution and for the students throughout Washington? Wow, I love this question. Honestly, this is huge for us for many reasons. Number one, COVID-19 has presented additional challenges for young people in terms of their ability to learn and grow. And so the need is huge. And we are up to the task of doing that work, but we can't do it without partners. And so having Howard University students serve as literacy tutors within our programs have double benefit in that you're right. We have wonderful individuals who will be trained and will use an evidence based curriculum to deliver the literacy intervention pieces. But then you also have someone whom for many of our students, they will share identity, maybe even background, and they will serve as an example, a role model, someone they can ask questions to. So another caring adult speaking into their lives, encouraging them to be the best that they can be amazing benefit for sure. Tell us a little bit about the program itself. How long has it been in operation and what have you seen in terms of outcomes from the students who have participated in it from kindergarten through fourth grade? Wonderful. So I'll take it a bit back. Reading partners itself was founded in 1999 by three community leaders who were committed to improving equitable access to high dosage literacy support for children in Manolo Park, California. Thanks to a partnership with New Schools Venture Fund, reading partners expanded to Washington DC and was the first region that they opened. And so we have been in the DC area of now for 10 years and we've had the great privilege of serving 5000 students, engaging 5000 volunteers and over 200 AmeriCorps members in the work that we do. And we definitely see our program in many ways, but the most specific one is our ability to bridge community with schools and making sure that we're all joining hands and service to the young people in the city. And Melissa, for Howard students, the young people of Howard have long been involved in community efforts and that stems beyond just education. You know, I don't think that they get even enough credit for as much work as they do in the district. How does this work out for the average Howard students community service profile in terms of being able to come in and say, hey, I participated in the school and I worked with the young person. What does that what does that mean to the Howard students kind of community service experience? Yeah. So first off, employers love to see students who have a diverse resume, so they may be working on an internship. They're taking full-time courses and then they also have an opportunity to get back to the team. So this is going to make them more competitive. It's going to give them a more competitive edge. And like you said earlier, it's going to allow them to get those skills to pipeline them into the workforce. We may have students who have an interest in being a teacher. You may have an interest in working in academia, higher education in the elementary schools. Starting with reading partners, say if you're a freshman student, you don't know where to begin. Reading partners is going to give you that opportunity to come in and get something on your resume from your freshman year. You don't have to wait until you're a senior or junior to get that internship. We want to get our students in the door right away. And reading partners is the perfect partnership to do that. Is it is it targeting a specific kind of student in a particular major? So you mentioned like education is something if you want to be a teacher, it obviously makes all the sense in the world. But is it open to all kinds of students? And then Shakura, for you, what kind of benefit does it get if it's open to every single kind of major? Does that lend itself to to a more vibrant or more diverse program for the young people, K through four, who are learning in it? Yeah, yeah, it's open to all students. But what when we think about experiential learning, you really are trying to get things on get skill sets for students that would help them in their career. So we want to make the program rich where students can get that that work experience. So it's not just only for students who have an interest in those fields. It's open to all students. So if you have a student and getting that community service piece, reading partners will allow them to allow them that opportunity. That's perfect. And I see the benefit in two ways. One, it is important for those who want to start teaching. This is a great way to get your introduction into working with a young person, being inside of a school, some of the rewards of teaching, some of the challenges. Sometimes it's a great opportunity for them for them to see that. But for those who are outside of the education space, there is an additional benefit here that they get the exposure into what are some of the things that are happening in schools? What are some of the bright spots? What are some of the challenges? And my sincere hope and the hope of our organization is that they go on to be champions of educational equity, no matter where they are. We want equity advocates in health. We want them in business. We want them in meteorological science. Whatever it is you're going to do, we want you to champion the importance of educational equity and we want them to share the experience of how powerful it is to work with our young people. Shakur, what does a typical day look like for a volunteer with the program? When do they come in? What are the expectations of how they should work with the young person and are their expectations as they should they should prove here? You know, here's some development taking place here. Yeah, great question. So at a minimum, all of our volunteers serve twice a week for an hour each session and working through our evidence based curriculum and also creating an individualized reading plan for every student. So this isn't sort of a cookie cutter. Everybody does the same thing. But our reading plans are very much tailored to the needs of the young person. We do pre and post assessments for every student. So we're able to chart their growth. And on the tutor side, there is anywhere from about four to six hours of total training because, again, we have an evidence based scripted curriculum. So we know what works and we have that and we want to train the volunteer within the curriculum. And we also have added a component, a trauma informed teaching practice component to ensure that our volunteers are equipped in the air of covid. We have all experienced trauma and we want to make sure that our volunteers are equipped to handle anything that may show up as they are working with with a student. And we want them to be aware of those types of things. And so all of that combined is used to help support the work that we're doing and to ensure the volunteer feels comfortable in delivering our program. Melissa, for the experiential learning part of this, obviously, as you mentioned, you're pipelining into a potential career or you could probably change your mind about the kind of career that you want to pursue. But is it something where you you also expect to be on the work the work study experience that there's something you can take back to a professor or take back to a mentor and say, you know, help me cultivate, you know, what I want to do here career wise or I'm learning this and I'm not so sure about it. Is there like an academic or career development part of this that you see beyond just here's experience in learning how to be a teacher? Most definitely, I believe that you never know until it's learning by doing. So you're never going to know unless you actually get in there and start doing the work, right? So we believe that these partnerships and this the opportunity for the students to get in there and become serve as a tutor, it may get their minds turning about different avenues or fields that they may not have considered. I know I don't know most of you have probably changed your major a million times. So when I was in college, I was a criminal justice major and then I had an opportunity to work at my high school. And I was like, hey, I kind of really like working with students. And then that's what pipeline means to higher education. So it's way it's way beyond just, you know, it being a community service partnership, but it's actually allowing the students to get into the field, look at the type of work that's being done and exposing them to different types of opportunities. And then the last question for both of you, and again, and I appreciate your time. What will define this as a successful partnership to each of you? What will things look like? What will be student outcomes? Or is there a certain number of participants that will say, you know what? We raised a lot of awareness and interest from the Howard University campus. What is the primary metric for you that says this thing is working and we should continue it into the future? I guess I'll go first. So I know for us here at Howard, like I mentioned, as a hard forward plan is serving the community, if we're able to advance those educational outcomes of our K through 16 institutions, that's going to for us. That's a success. We're able to see the students like she mentioned that they are behind in their reading literacy. So if we're able to increase those numbers, increase the number of volunteers that they have, she mentioned that they want to have a thousand students next year. Howard students, we want to be a part of that. So if we can get you over a hundred volunteers from Howard University, that's a success. But that's something that we are wanting to do. A part of the federal work study program, there is a seven percent number that we have to meet a community service position. So seven percent of our of our jobs and the students that are working in seven percent of those students have to be in community service mode. So we can get that seven percent, get a thousand volunteers or reading partners to me. That's so that's what I'm excited about. And I'm hoping that we can that I'm hoping we will get that done this year. Music to my ears. You see why we're so excited about this partnership. I think a very sort of the biggest metric would be the excitement of our young people in partnering with Howard University students, maybe even hearing a young person say, I want to go to Howard. That's huge. That's what we want to encourage. But as long as we have dedicated and committed students who are willing to learn to grow and commit to these young people, that's that that's probably the greatest outcome for us. And you never know, folks might be so excited. They decide, actually, let me do this again and join AmeriCorps and stay with us for a year and actually run the reading centers. And so all of those opportunities are out there and we're just excited.