A new literacy tutoring program is up and running in Davidson, thanks to a group of college students and the support of their community.
The program, Davidson Reads, is the result of a true collaborative effort, with coordination and commitment from across the community: Davidson College students act as program coordinators and tutors, Davidson K-8 administrators connect students in need of tutoring with the program, Read Charlotte provides the curriculum and materials, and Temple Kol Tikvah donates space for the twice-weekly tutoring sessions. Because of all that, the program incurs no operational costs, and is free for local families.
Two Davidson College students, Steve Mirabello and Nina Worley, worked with their professor, Dr. Rebeca Fernandez (who is also a member of Read Charlotte’s advisory board), to develop the program. They saw a need for tutoring services in the area, and knew many community-minded peers at Davidson would want to help.
“We wanted to make volunteering more accessible on campus, and also build stronger connections between the college and the wider Davidson community,” Worley said.
They thought Queen City Readers (QCR), a word reading curriculum developed by Read Charlotte, would be a good fit for the program they envisioned. Mirabello was familiar with QCR’s approach and potential uses, as he completed an internship with Read Charlotte in the summer of 2023, during the final phase of the curriculum’s development. QCR appealed to them because it was evidence-based, designed to be turnkey, and required minimal training and no prior experience for volunteers.
“We’re really grateful that we were able to get a group of Davidson students, with all their time commitments and busy lives, to come out twice a week,” Mirabello said. “And I think part of that speaks to the flexibility of the program, having just one hour a day as the ask, because you just need to walk there and start the lesson. I’ve done tutoring in the past where you need to make a new lesson in advance every time before you work with the student, and one of the great advantages of Queen City Readers is, it’s all made for you. You know exactly what you’re going to be doing when you get there.”
The simplicity appeals to volunteers, the students said, and is part of why several in their program continued tutoring during the 2024-25 school year, after participating in the program’s pilot the prior year.
“We haven’t experienced a tutor needing more support with training past the videos or binder explanations,” Worley said. “I think that’s always been really simple and gets tutors coming back to the program and spreading the word. It’s definitely been that simple turnkey aspect that is the best part of it.”
In planning for the 2024-25 school year, Mirabello and Professor Fernandez connected with administrators at nearby Davidson K-8 about collaborating to identify kindergarten and first-grade students who would benefit from participating in Davidson Reads. The principal and assistant principal were instrumental in that process, Mirabello and Worley said, and helped establish an improved and more formalized version of the program.
“We could not be more grateful to the Davidson K-8 team for identifying the highest-need students for Davidson Reads, connecting us with parents, drafting consent forms, and working with teachers to ensure Davidson Reads participants are all ready to go when we arrive,” Worley said.
The donated space at Temple Kol Tikvah, where Worley is a Hebrew School teacher, has also been a key piece in keeping the program running smoothly. Because it’s so close to Davidson K-8, the program coordinators can meet students at their school and walk them over to the temple for tutoring sessions, then return with any students staying for after-school care.
“So families don’t have to worry about driving the kids to the temple and figuring out if it works with their work schedule,” said Chloe Killinger, a Davidson College student who joined the Davidson Reads team this year. “It’s been really helpful with making sure that any student who needs Davidson Reads is able to access it.”
“That was one of the barriers we learned about last year,” Mirabello added. “It’s been huge to be able to pick up the kids ourselves, to really open up the program to as many families as possible.”
Davidson Reads supported 13 kindergarten and first-grade students this school year, and saw promising results in the growth of their literacy skills.
“As we were grading the end-of-the-semester assessments and saw the improvement from the kids, we all honestly got a little emotional just because of how much progress was made,” Killinger said. “And when I saw that impact, it just filled me with so much happiness and made me really excited to see the program progress in the future.”
Seeing the bonds that develop between the tutors and elementary students is another special part of this work, she said.
“The last day of tutoring for this year really said a lot,” Killinger said. “When we were saying, ‘Oh, it’s the last day,’ you just heard a choir of kids groaning and moaning and saying, ‘No, I don’t want it to be the last day. I don’t want to stop seeing my tutor. I don’t want to stop seeing you guys and doing this.’ And just to see them so upset to stop reading tutoring, I feel like it really spoke volumes.”
Killinger, Mirabello, and Worley hope to see the program continue in future years at Davidson. Mirabello is a senior, Worley is a junior, and Killinger is a sophomore; a framework for program coordinators they think will be important in creating institutional knowledge as seniors graduate each spring. The support of the Davidson College community, particularly Professor Fernandez, Professor Chris Marsicano, and the Educational Studies Department, has been and will be a big part of the program’s success, they said.
“It’s really wonderful to see so many students here at Davidson really wanting to reach out and help students of the future,” Killinger said. “And I feel like it just reinforces how great and how strong of a community Davidson has as a whole, and this connection that the town has to the college campus, and how we want to continue growing that.”
