Interview with Dr. Lou Denti, Director of The Reading Center at California State University in Monterey Bay
Linda Schreiber:I'm on the phone today with Dr. Lou Denti, Director of The Reading Center at California State University in Monterey Bay. Good afternoon Lou.
Dr. Lou Denti:Hello.
Linda:A few years ago, you hosted a Leadership Conference at the Reading Center in Monterey Bay and many leaders in our field were able to see first-hand the great things happening there. I am one of many who are curious about the Reading Center. Lou, tell us what the center's mission is and the kinds of resources found at the Reading Center.
Lou:Well, let me start by telling you a little bit about our history. About two and a half years ago, we received a very large gift from an anonymous donor for $2.5 million. And I just happened to pitch an idea about a reading center and this was very appealing to that particular donor. We went to the drawing board and developed a proposal. As a result of interest in that proposal, her team of legal counsel decided to go forward with it.
We renovated a building. We are on the old Fort Ord campus, which was a military establishment; we've turned part of this military establishment into a university, one of the 23 California State Universities. Our goals were to provide direct service to our community. We serve a tri-county area in CaliforniaSanta Cruz, San Benito and Monterey countiesand our service is to provide an opportunity for struggling readers to come to our facility on campus where we provide direct, one-on-one instruction under the direction of a reading specialist. University student tutors are trained by our reading specialist, Laura Matter, and then under her watchful eye provide direct one-to-one intensive tutoring.
So we developed an quite an operation herewe've only been going for a little over a yearand we now are serving clients from the tri-county area. It's pretty exciting!
Linda:Exciting for you and exciting for the university students. What an opportunity for them. Are the student tutors education majors?
Lou:We have quite a number of student tutors who are from our liberal studies program, business program, and other majors on campus. They are students who are interested in helping and serving.
Linda:You've been in operation a little over a year. How many children are you serving thus far?
Lou:We are providing services to approximately 40 kids one-on-one, two times per weekthat's the mandatory minimum amount of time students sign up for. We also have a small Pre-K readiness program.
Linda:So your overall mission is to give children an opportunity to learn to read and they're children from your tri-county area. Tell me how you do that.
Lou:We provide a reading diagnostic, starting with an informal intake with the parent and the client and then our reading specialist does an informal assessment. And then after that, the parent can sign up for a formal assessment and they do pay a stipend for that.
We go over that assessment with the parents and we say, OK, this is where your child's at and this is what we can do. This is what we think will happen in the next three or four months and this is the kind of reporting that we're going to give you. And this is the kind of information we're going to provide to you on a bi-monthly basis. We do monitor progress pretty closely so we can share that information with parents.
Linda:Then you provide instructional services based on evidence-based practices. How so?
Lou:Well, we are fortunate that we've hired two faculty members; one that serves as a lead faculty memberDr. Carl Fergusonand Dr. Cathi Draper-Rodriguez. Both of them work with the reading specialist to bring in programs and assessments that they've used or they've helped develop to make sure that we're using the state of the art assessments and instructional materials.
And we also have provided a very specific training for our reading specialist in programs like LindaMood-Bell which offers training close by in San Luis Obispo. We're also using some of the programs that might be in schools, for instance, a program like Read Naturally. This is a program student tutors can understand and use and there's progress monitoring built into it so we're able to see the growth in our kids. But that's just one of the many programs we might use. Like I said, it's Pre-K through 12. We have high school kids and we have a Pre-K program, so we tailor the program to fit individual student needs,
Linda:And what's your sense of student enjoyment? Is this another dreaded reading class?
Lou:It's really kind of fun here. It's very different than school. It doesn't look like school; it's not like a clinic; it's very warm; it's very inviting. And the clients are with college students that are kind of fun to be around. We have very specific programs that the kids seem to really take to. What we like about it is, well, we're kind of a neutral environmentwe are not peddling a program.
Linda:Yes. So your program happens primarily during the school year, correct?
Lou:And the summer. We have three sessions; one that starts in the fall and parallels the university calendar for 15 weeks, then we have the next session in spring, and then in the summer our third session. We also run a Summer Reading Camp.
Linda:Reading camp! That sounds like fun.
Lou:We run two sessions from 9:00 until noon for two-weeks each. And once again, we work with the kids on some specific programs, but that's not the emphasis in the summer. The emphasis in the summer is on enrichment. So we're doing poetry; we're doing a lot of oral reading, and lots of fun activities related to literacy.
They also work with the science department on campusfor example, kids might go out and learn the names of the native plants and maybe actually help plant with instructors and students from the science department.
We also include musicour reading specialist, Laura, is a great singer. She brings in her musical talent and we have a lot of fun with that. It's very appealing to the parents and the kids.
Linda:Sounds like a lot of meaningful and fun learning. I want to come too! How do you manage to meet the needs of Pre-K to 12?
Lou:Our focus area for Summer Camp, Linda, is just third through sixth grade. We really felt like we needed to narrow that group down because it's too difficult to run a camp for Pre-K through 12.
Linda:My guess is you charge tuition for the Reading Center activities and the Summer Reading Camp, but every community will have children who have great need but can't afford the tuition. Have you worked that into the system?
Lou:Oh yes, we have. We provide scholarships and there's a criteria we've developed for qualifying. One of the areas where we're really supporting quite a number of families here is our military families coming back from Iraq. We found they want the service; they can locate the service because some of the families can live close by, but they're unable to afford it along with some of the other financial challenges that they have. So we've been very supportive of those individuals.
We never give a full scholarship because we work that out with the parents and they feel more comfortable paying a share, a portion. And so we're delighted to be able to do that. We also have several families that are economically challenged and we work with those families as well. We've never turned anyone away and we never will. We have about 40% of our families on some kind of reduction. Our payment schedule is on our website.
Linda:That's admirable. So you've talked a lot about what you've provided for the kids. Are you providing support via the Reading Center for teachers in the community?
Lou:I'm glad you asked and the answer is yes. The building is designed with classrooms built in so we could provide direct teacher training. The Reading Center is a lab for prospective teachers, whether they are reading teachers, general teachers, or special education teachersall reading classes prospective teachers are taking for their coursework are here in the building. What we're working out for this year is that for any of the teachers who need students for their case studies, they will be able to work with students coming to the Reading Center. Those teachers who are already in the field now will have access to students that are coming to the Reading Center. So it's like a mini-lab here. And that's been in the making for the entire year. We've been talking about this and it's going to come to fruition this next year. Albeit it small, we'll continue to talk about other opportunities for student teachers.
And one last thingwe are now going to be able to offer a Reading Certificate as a result of developing the Reading Center. We've been approved by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing in California to offer a Reading Certificate and now we're working with the university to receive approval through our Academic Senate. It looks like we'll have that off the ground in spring of next year. And the nice thing about it is we're going to get a blend of special and general educators coming to actually add that certificate onto their credentials.
Linda:It must be a great place for teachers to come to become inspired about teaching reading and promoting literacy skills in all children. Obviously, through your leadership, the number of clients you serve and the programs and services you provide to the communities in the tri-county area is growing every year.
Linda:Lou, thank you for sharing a vision of "reading community" with us. If others would like more information, they can visit the website at: https://readingcenter.csumb.edu or contact you at: 831-582-5259.
Thanks again Lou and best wishes for a productive year.