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Not just kids’ play: OSU Kid Corps takes on early literacy for Columbus preschoolers

Posted on | March 4, 2009 | 945 views |

By Julia Harris

Aaron Robertson knows he can’t make every preschooler in the Columbus metropolitan area fall in love with reading. But that doesn’t stop him — and about 90 Ohio State students — from trying.

For the past four years, Robertson has been spearheading a group called OSU Kid Corps, an intrepid and steadily growing band of college students who work with local preschool providers to develop early literacy skills.

The program is affiliated with AmeriCorps, which means that after a year of service — a hefty 300 hours — students are entitled to an education benefit of $1,000, in addition to the work-study stipend most of them typically receive.

While roughly half of the students in Kid Corps are education majors, the other half are recruited from all over campus. There are biology majors, pre-med majors, even the occasional law student — a well-seasoned group that provides a lot of diversity in background, ideology and experience, according to Robertson.

Divided into 13 different teams of anywhere from three to 10 members, the students undergo extensive training at the beginning of the year in research-based literacy and behavior practices before they are sent out to one of seven different preschool centers each week, for a total of six hours per week.

Not all of those six hours are spent working directly with children, Robertson says. A third of the time, the students are hard at work on creating the lesson plans they hope will fire the imaginations of their preschoolers.

“We try to find out what the kids are interested in and then sneak the content in around that,” Robertson confessed. “If the kids are interested in Spider-Man, we’ll take it to them that way. If it’s football, we’ll do that.”

In other words, any literacy is good literacy, as indicated by the gains made in standardized test scores.

“We know that children who enter school not fully prepared both in pre-literacy skills and social skills may never catch up with their peers,” said Cynthia Buettner, principal investigator for the project and assistant professor in the College of Education and Human Ecology.

“So investments made with preschoolers have the potential of changing the life trajectory of a child.”

Not to mention the life trajectory of a Kid Corps member.

“We’ve had students change majors after this experience,” Robertson said. “One pre-med major changed hers to early childhood development. Some education majors realized that teaching really wasn’t what they wanted to do with their lives. Either way, it’s a very meaningful experience.”

As an example, he cites the experience of fourth-year student Jomika Sherrell, who has participated in Kid Corps all four years — despite the fact that the education benefit is only offered for two years of participation. During her third year, Robertson said, Sherrell’s work-study funding was abruptly cut midway through her term of service, forcing her to withdraw. This year, she signed up again as a team coordinator and even though her work-study funding was once again eliminated, she has committed to staying on for the full 300 hours.

Sherrell is matter-of-fact about her commitment. “Kid Corps gives me a chance to make a positive impact on students at a young age,” she said. “My four years here have proven to me that a little care, support and kindness go a long way.”

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