ABQ Reads is in full swing coming into the new year.
Albuquerque Public Schools site coordinators have been hard at work creating engaging lessons and a comfortable community environment for our students and tutors to excel in while building reading skills.
For the fall semester, to help build home libraries, ABQ Reads donated eight books per student for a grand total of 978 books in the hands of children. While the number fluctuates, the program provides books for approximately 200 children every month.
In December, each child received a backpack with folders, a pencil case, erasers and a pencil along with their books for the month. These backpacks and extra goodies were gifts from the Chamber, community sponsors and donations.
Oftentimes, reading isn’t the only blessing to come to the students and tutors; they build meaningful relationships with each other during the program year. This friendly bond was well shown during the Christmas season as tutors at the different school sites came together to add extra small gift items in the backpacks for their students such as knitted caps and socks.
Unfortunately, due to the need for more tutors, we are only able to tutor about 150 of the students. While our tutor numbers have increased from 125 in August to 164 in January, we still need more tutors.
In order to service all of the students in the targeted grade levels at our current schools, the need for tutors by day at each school site is:
These numbers are the minimum needed right now, but we need even more tutors for substitutes and to continue growing. If you have been thinking about tutoring with us, now is your time to jump in. We would love to have you. Go to ABQReads.com or email [email protected].
Going into the spring, ABQ Reads will continue to provide at least two books a month through April. We have purchased three fun Dr. Seuss books to give away for Dr. Seuss month in March, and we are hoping to work with sponsors to provide a small stack of summer reading books to send the children off to summer with.
At the end of April, we will have our year-end celebrations for each school to celebrate all of our students’ accomplishments this program year.
Atrisco will be celebrating its 20th year with ABQ Reads! They will have a New Mexico author, Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw, at their celebration to discuss her journey with books. The program gave her award-winning book “Like You, Like Me” to students in October. This will be a fantastic experience for the children to see how they, too, can grow into authors or anything else they may aspire to be.
THANK YOU to ALL of our tutors, sponsors, and donors for continuing to support the rise of reading with ABQ Reads!
