JUST DO the RIGHT THING!

Kids can’t read? Hundreds want to help 

Metro residents ready to aid DPS

By CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY

FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER

Detroit Public Schools put out a call to the region Sunday to recruit volunteers to do 100,000 service hours to help teach children to read and re tired mechanic Mark Durfee, 55, of Detroit didn’t hesitate.

The self-published poet read an article about the new DPS Reading Corps online at 2 a.m. He clicked on the link and became the first of more than 700 people to volunteer within 36 hours. An additional 140 people signed up by phone.

The volunteers include men and women from throughout the tri-county area from com munities such as Grosse Pointe and Grosse Ile to Southfield and Sterling Heights.

“I have to have faith that the coming generation can make Detroit, Michigan, the nation and the world a better place than the one we are leaving be hind,” Durfee said. “If the com ing generation of kids cannot read, they will fail in bringing that change. That is why I vol unteered.”

The DPS Reading Corps is being organized in the wake of last week’s release of the Na tional Assessment of Educa tional Progress math test. De troit’s fourth- and eighth-grad ers scored worse than any U.S. city in the 40-year history of the test.

Educators said students who had problems with read ing had trouble with the test. The math test is full of story problems and about 40% of it can include open-ended ques tions, according to the Nation al Center for Education Statis tics, which administers the test.

“Literacy is the fundamen tal key to all content areas,” Barbara Byrd-Bennett, the chief academic and account ability auditor for DPS, said at Monday’s news conference to kick off the Reading Corps.

Volunteers must get a back ground check, attend an orien tation and four to six hours of training on the district’s read ing recovery program that will be used in the tutoring ses sions.

Training for tutors is ex pected to begin in January. Tu tors will be asked to help a min imum of two students for 30 minutes a week each.

Durfee, author of “Stink: Poetry and Prose of Detroit 2005-2009,” said he wants the children of Detroit “know they are not forgotten, and they are thought about and cared for.”

To volunteer, go to www.detroitk12.org.