Clinton calls on students to help boost literacy

The "American Reads' initiative will pay work study students to ensure literacy among third graders. By next fall, several hundred University students will have become part of President Clinton's "citizen army" to increase literacy. In his State of the Union Address Tuesday night, Clinton announced the "America Reads" initiative -- an effort to mobilize one million volunteers to ensure literacy among American third graders. The volunteers will include at least 100,000 college students. America Reads comes as a result of increases to the Federal Work Study program, which allows college students to receive financial aid in exchange for part-time work at their colleges. Approximately 3,500 Penn students currently participate in work study, according to Frank Claus, director of Student Financial Services. The federal government has asked universities to devote at least 50 percent of the additional funding to allow students to work in local literacy programs, according to Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs Carol Scheman. The program -- which will begin recruiting student next fall -- will include both students already involved in the work study program and current tutors who may apply for work study funding, according to Amy Cohen, Penn Program for Public Service associate director. University administrators hope the increased funding will broaden opportunities for students to qualify for work study, though students must still demonstrate financial need to be eligible for the program. Cohen said the work study literacy project will take a different approach than some of the University's other West Philadelphia tutoring programs. "You may have [Penn] students going in and training high school students and adults to increase the amount of people who are able to work in literacy programs," Cohen said. And Scheman explained that the program will require students to interact with younger children than those involved in most of the University's current tutoring programs, and to use different teaching approaches. "What students are going to have to bring to this is a huge tolerance for short, young people," Scheman said. "There are going to have to come prepared with tissues and a lot of patience and blue jeans so that you can sit on the floor." Students in various tutoring programs said the idea of tutors receiving financial aid through work study was a good one. "Many students do this type of thing because they want to, but this may help get new students involved," said College sophomore Rebecca Heller, who participates in the West Philadelphia Tutoring Project. But Scheman said the program presents several organizational difficulties, most of which should be worked out within the next few weeks by the Center for Community Partnerships and Associate Vice President for Policy Planning David Morse. "For work study programs that are internal to the University, it is easy to manage the forms you needs to get people paid," Scheman said. "We may have to organize this differently." She said it may be difficult to determine how to match tutors with students, adding that these issues will probably make the start-up time for the program slower than administrators would like. And she said there is some anxiety that the program could undermine current West Philadelphia educational projects. Cohen said she does not see the new program as a threat to existing ones, although care must be taken to ensure the program is organized carefully to fit into its future home -- the Center for Community Partnerships. And students involved in tutoring programs said West Philadelphia schools could always use more tutors. But College junior and West Philadelphia Teach Director Sara Newman expressed some concerns about so-called "paid volunteers." "I am not sure how much I agree with paid volunteer work," Newman said. "I'm not sure how that would affect the quality of the work if people were there because they had to be." Scheman said the project is currently in a state of "ambiguity" and that such issues would have to be worked out as planning begins over the next few weeks. "Anyone involved in this is going to have a high tolerance for ambiguity, but what goes along with that is an opportunity for creativity," Scheman said.