Elmer Smith: At Bryant School, progress has everything to do with Experience

YOU CAN'T miss room 205 at the Bryant Elementary school. It's right at the intersection of youth and experience.

It's a place where small children who have trouble learning to read and senior citizens who are eager to serve meet to satisfy their mutual needs.

Bryant, at 60th Street and Cedar Avenue, in West Philadelphia, is one of 40 schools where the Experience Corps places retiree volunteers who have been trained as tutors for primary-school children.

Washington University in St. Louis released a study last week that attempts to quantify the effectiveness of programs like the one at Bryant.

"Students with Experience Corps tutors," the study concludes, "made 60 percent more progress in sounding out new words and reading comprehension than similar students not served by tutors."

The study also found that working with Experience Corps volunteers is as effective a tool for primary-school children as the advantage of "being assigned to classrooms with 40 percent fewer students."

None of this is news to Annette Bush, the team leader for the senior volunteers who meet Tuesday through Thursday with their young charges at Bryant.

She shows me a stack of manila folders with weekly progress reports for children they tutor. She explains an elaborate rating system that charts each student's progress against a set standard.

But her personal standard is much simpler.

"I'll tell you what progress looks like," she began. "It's when you have a child who can't write his whole name when he comes to us but he can now.

"Just the fact that they really want to be here to learn is progress.

"I had a girl from an African country. If I showed her an apple, she said the French word for apple. Now she says 'apple.' That's progress."

But she doesn't limit her assessment to those obvious advances in skills.

"We have brought in doctors and architects who look like them so they know that they can do those things, too," she said.

"After President Obama's innauguration, I made each one of them raise their right hand and recite the oath of office so they would learn what it means."

What it means for the Bryant children is a chance to be reading on grade level by the third or fourth grade and access to all the doors that reading comprehension can open for them.

It means at least that much to volunteers who may otherwise be wasting away in retirement.

"I retired from the Veterans Administration as a telecomunications specialist," Bush said. "I was looking for my next assignment when I read about Experience Corps. I had always wanted to be a teacher or a cop or a judge. But my counselor at West Philly High kept knocking me down.

"Every job I had involved some teaching. I had four children at home to teach. I had volunteered at the Red Cross, at Women Organized Against Rape and in literacy programs. So, this was perfect."

It's been a snug fit for hundreds of senior volunteers around the country. Experience Corps is one of a dozen volunteer programs brought together by the Clinton administration under the title AmeriCorps.

It was expanded this week when Obama signed the Kennedy-Hatch Save America Act. It may increase the number of volunteers to 250,000 by 2017.

For Rob Teitz, director of Experience Corps Philadelphia, the expansion came at a crucial time. His program, which serves 4,500 children in 40 schools with 400 volunteers, is facing a 20 percent reduction.

Whatever new money comes to Philadelphia, which was one of the five founding cities, will go to paying the small stipend that senior volunteers are awarded.

"They work 15 hours a week and we pay them $230 a month," Teitz said. "It's a matter of removing the economic barriers that keep people from serving.

"The expansion lets senior volunteers give their grandchildren the tuition awards that AmeriCorps volunteers get when they complete their service."

The real reward is in the doing, Bush says.

"This is a gift," she said. "I'm thankful every day for this chance." *

Send e-mail to smithel@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2512. For recent columns: http://go.philly.com/smith