The Greater Starkville Development Partnership created a program, called Project CLASS, to help third grade students.
Allison Matthews, Vice President of Membership & Community Development at the Partnership, said education has been the number one priority for the partnership.
It is a program that carries out an idea into something tangible. It will put teams of four to five students in classrooms to help students on an individual basis, Matthews said.
“If a child cannot read at grade level by the third grade, there could be a variety of different issues, and once a child gets behind, they just continue to get more and more behind,” Matthews said.
Third grade is also the first year students take state tests and do not have an assistant teacher, so that helped influence the decision to focus on the third grade.
Matthews said teachers are limited with how much one-on-one attention they can give any one child.
Amelia Killcreas, Publications Editor in the Office of Agricultural Communications, had the opportunity to volunteer during the pilot program that took place last spring when she heard about it through her church, she said.
Killcreas also noticed the need for individual time for students.
“Some kids just don’t get a lot of attention in a class with 30 kids,” she said.
Killcreas said there has been good community response thus far. Since the beginning of the week, there has been a steady flow of inquiries into office.
“We are really looking forward to a large group of volunteers,” Matthews said.
Karen Templeton, a news writer and editor in the office of agricultural communications, also had the chance to participate in the pilot program last spring through the same church team as Killcreas and thought that the more involvement, the better.
“We all want to improve education in our community, and the best way to do that is to get involved,” she said. “The kids were eager and really liked the personal attention.”
Killcreas said how much fun the kids seemed to be having.
“The kids felt like it was fun, even though it was the same material they were doing in class,” she said.
Students in of need help will be identified by the teachers so they can have one-on-one time with the volunteers, Matthews said.
“Students really just need repetition. It’s not that the student is not smart, but just needs extra one-on-one help,” Matthews said.
Matthews said that while academics are important, they are not in isolation. Killcreas identified this while volunteering last spring.
“I think we helped emotionally and socially just as much as anything we did academically,” Killcrease said.
In order to volunteer for the project, those interested in participating must go to the Greensboro Center in Starkville to get a background check then return a day later (after the background check has been processed) and have a volunteer ID made.
Finally, before actually going to a volunteer session in a classroom setting, participants will have to go through a training session that will likely be held on campus, Matthews said.
The diversity of volunteers will be anywhere from college students to retirees, said Matthews, and she looks forward to the variety of different teams helping in the Project CLASS volunteer program.
All times will be during normal elementary school hours.
“Volunteers don’t have to come at the same time every week, but times will be worked out with individual teachers,” she said.