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Thursday, August 21, 2008
Join the Spelling Bee Club
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Two years ago, Rosemarie Lebert-Clarke invested her own money to launch an academic tutoring service.
Reading to Learn Inc., sits next to a Domino’s Pizza and a Mega Tools store in a strip mall off Indian Trail Road in Lilburn. Unlike the franchised operations that charge out the wazoo, the nonprofit organization charges a sliding fee.
“There are so many people who just can’t afford Sylvan Learning Centers,” Lebert-Clarke said Wednesday when the Badie Tour stopped by.
In the years that Reading to Learn has operated, Lebert-Clarke has noticed a common thread among the students who seek one-on-one help with math, science, reading and writing. Many can’t read well.
“Even the ones who are doing OK in school can’t,” Lebert-Clarke said. “I’ve had 12th-graders functioning at the sixth or seventh-grade reading level. “And most of them are boys.”
That last comment stung. That’s the very reason I started a book club for boys nearly two years ago. There’s been an ebb and flow in the number of participants - from a high of 14 tykes to the current six who are sticking it out. We read several books last year. Now that school is back in, our get-togethers and discussions should become more routine.
Lebert-Clarke contacted me when she read my initial column about the club. She wanted to wish us well, and said she’d thought about starting a similar group.
“I decided not to since you were starting one in the area,” she told me.
But there’s room aplenty for enrichment activities and programs to stir young minds. And Lebert-Clarke, who left the world of corporate advertising and lithography to start Reading to Learn, told me about a project she plans to launch this fall.
It’s a free Spelling Bee Club. It will be for boys and girls in fifth through eighth grades. The idea is to help kids expand their vocabulary and reading comprehension skills by using strategies, games and other means.
“It won’t be just spelling,” Lebert-Clarke told me. “They’ll learn the roots and origins of the words and their meanings. It can help them in the long run with standardized tests and when they read, they’ll understand more.”
Beginning Oct. 3, the club will meet every Saturday from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Reading to Learn center. Kids from any metro Atlanta school system can apply to join the club, but there are requirements. They must have a least a C+ in their most recent language arts class. Students will be chosen on the basis of a teacher’s recommendation and on the quality of an essay that they must write - “Why should I be selected to be a member of the Reading to Learn Spelling Bee Club.” The deadline for the essay is Sept. 12.
“Kids have very low esteem these days,” Lebert-Clarke told me. “All they hear is that they are failing. Our purpose is to focus on reading, math and science. To help kids learn in every subject.
“And to build their self-esteem.”
For more information about the Reading to Learn Spelling Bee Club call Rosemarie Lebert-Clarke at 770-279-6987 or visit www.readingtolearn.us. Rick Badie updates his blog daily. Readers who want to discuss the people, places, events and topics he writes about may post comments online or contact Badie directly. He can be reached at 770-263-3875 or via e-mail: rbadie@ajc.com.
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