A safe place to have fun

The following was written by sophomore Phyllis Willis, social work student, from Miami Hamilton about her experience working with the Boys & Girls Club on East Avenue with the Accelerated Reader (AR) program. 

This summer, I volunteered at the Boys and Girls club of Hamilton, they have a reading program every summer. This program allows the children, to keep their reading skills through the summer, and it also gives them an incentive to read. The children that read 50 or more books in the summer, are given a pool party! The books are set up on the book shelves by grade level, and they are color coded. The children can then look on the binder of the book, and see what level it is, and pick according to their grade. Once they have read the book, they take a quiz on the computer. There are usually 5 questions, and once they finish the quiz, a score of 80% or higher allows them to get a choice of any piece of candy they want, and this happens for every book they read. If they read 5 books in a day, the prize can be snacks, flip flops, purses, and stuffed animals. There is a great assortment of prizes, and it makes the kids really happy to be rewarded for their hard work. 

Through this summer, there have been at least 4 kids that have reached the 50 plus book marker. A few of them have read over a 150 books. This shows what a great resource the Hamilton Branch of the Boys and Girls club is. The club also has swimming, arts and crafts, and electronic games. So this shows that the reading program that Ms Deb runs is competing with a lot of other distractions. It also shows how much dedication that The Club has to these children. These are children that probably are not even considered middle class, but this Club offers them a place to go, that feels safe, allows them to have fun, and it does this for little or no money. This is a great resource in that community.

I feel honored and privileged to have been able to be a small part of that program, and I received so much more from the program, than I gave. The smile on those children faces as they read or was read too became the highlight of my week. This is a wonderful program and I have enjoyed myself immensely!

Each reader has a set of flip flops and for every book they read they get a sticker!

These are the students that have read over 50 books and get a pool party!