For more than 10 years, a literacy program at Cuyahoga County Public Library has helped first, second, and third graders become better readers and pass their state reading tests.
It’s called 1-2-3 Read, an afterschool program in which children, identified by their schools as experiencing trouble with their reading, work on literacy with an experienced educator and community volunteers.
1-2-3 Read began during the 2012-2013 school year as a pilot program, a partnership between Cuyahoga County Public Library and The Literacy Cooperative, a Cleveland nonprofit that aims to improve literacy. This was after library officials noticed that children in some school districts weren’t keeping pace with the third grade reading guarantee.
Ohio law requires testing of K-3 pupils when it comes to reading and intervention for those who are struggling. Third graders can’t advance to the fourth grade if they don’t pass the test, with some exceptions.
The program, in partnership with local school districts, serves about 140 children at the Bedford, Garfield Heights, Maple Heights, North Olmsted, Parma, South Euclid and Warrensville Heights branch libraries. In the 2023-2024 school year, 97 % of pupils who attended 1-2-3 Read advanced to the next grade. The success rate was 98 % in 2022-2023.
“We are not claiming that we are exclusively the reason these children advanced in grade and improved their reading,” says Kaleb Curry, student success manager at the Cuyahoga County Public Library, who oversees all afterschool programming for children. “But we collect data from schools on students who enrolled in 1-2-3 Read, but never attended for various reasons. Typically, those students, we won’t see as high a growth rate as those who do attend.”
Monica Huff, of Garfield Heights, sent her children Carter, now in third grade, and Drew, a first grader, to the 1-2-3 Read program. Carter and Drew not only improved their reading, they also became acquainted with the library, an unexpected bonus.
“Now Carter is more comfortable asking for help and using the library and their resources, and he’s more excited about reading,” Huff says. “It’s one thing for me to tell him about the importance of reading and telling him when I see improvement. But it makes a difference when he gets encouragement from people outside the family who watch him grow. It helps motivate him a little better.”
The problem is that finding enough volunteers to read with children in 1-2-3 Read can be difficult, at least in some districts. Ideally, each volunteer reads with just one child. In reality, the ratio is sometimes one [volunteer] to two or even three. There might even be a waiting list.
“I won’t pretend, it is definitely a challenge recruiting volunteers,” Curry says. “We are thankful for our volunteers but we recognize that it’s not necessarily for everyone.”
“We also live in a post-COVID world where fewer people are volunteering in general,” Curry adds. “Our volunteer coordinator is always looking for folks and looking for new avenues to recruit volunteers. It just takes time.”
The 1-2-3 pilot program was successful, but expensive because it used all paid staff. The library wanted to find more affordable path forward. It brought in Celia Huffman, the former youth services manager out of retirement. Through research, she found a program in Portland, Oregon called SMART Reading, which pairs unpaid volunteers with children for one-on-one reading practice. Huffman created a hybrid initiative in which paid educators lead 1-2-3 sessions with support from volunteers. The program is funded entirely by grants and contributions from individual donors.
1-2-3 Read started in Warrensville Heights, but has expanded into other districts, and its content has evolved over the years. For example, board games that emphasize words and sentence formation were added to the sessions after it was discovered that kids learn through play.
“What we never change, even as we tweak pieces and parts, is the core of the program, which is the volunteers reading with the kids,” Curry says.
Huff hopes that more people will volunteer for 1-2-3 Read. Her son Carter was unable to enroll in the program at first because there weren’t enough volunteers in Garfield Heights. He was put on a waiting list.
“I know there are people who want their kids to participate who don’t get a chance to,” Huff says.
To volunteer for 1-2-3 Read contact Nicole Beleske at [email protected] or visit cuyahogalibrary.org/support/volunteer
