Reading Together, from a Distance
In this guest post, Caitlyn Lubas recounts her experience co-founding the Virtual Reading Program and the progress that has been made since then.
A recording of the Virtual Reading program pilot session
Last August, Jordan Wolken and I started an Alumni Committee for Amenuveve. Early that fall, we fundraised on behalf of the Scholarship Fund to send the students of Woadze Tsatoe to school. However, we learned that scholarship recipients had trouble adhering to their studies. This problem was compounded by the arrival of Covid-19 in Ghana, which forced the local schools to shut down indefinitely.
To motivate the students to invest time in their education, we launched the first Alumni Reading Session in December— we “Zoomed” into their classroom to listen to them practice reading various passages. From this pilot, we realized that we could make the experience more interactive by integrating reading comprehension and vocabulary questions into the program, so we iterated and improved the format of the sessions.
Six months later, our students and their teacher, Francis Dzabri, surprised us by showing up on our Zoom call wearing shirts that read “Improve your knowledge through reading!”
Moments like this go to show how doing volunteer work outside of your main job can be immensely rewarding – I wouldn't even call it volunteer work; it’s just pure fun and passion!
The Virtual Reading Program takes place every other week with a rotating group of guest moderators. For more information, please contact rachelkowal@stern.nyu.edu.