Children & Youth Issue Team

Current Children & Youth Issue Team Organizers:

Laura File, Sarah Allen, & Bre LeMasters

The Children & Youth Team hard at work in the CCE! Pictured left to right: Sarah Allen, Laura File, and Bre LeMasters.

In addition to the projects and events below, the Children & Youth Team works with the CCE staff to maintain partnerships with and place volunteers at:

the Child Development Center of Central WV, Inc.
the Kenneth Honey Rubenstein Juvenile Center
Upshur County Head Start centers
Union Elementary School
Academy Elementary School
Stockert Youth Center
Read Aloud West Virginia

Children and Youth WE LEAD Issue Team Host First Movie Night

November 17, 2010

WE LEAD’s Children and Youth issue team hosted their first event since coming under new leadership. The new student leaders, Laura File, Breanna LeMasters, and Sarah Allen, showed the movie The First Year to a small group of their peers and hosted a discussion afterwards, facilitated by LeeAnn Brown. The group discussed the challenges of being a first year teacher in the public education system and the state of K-12 education today. The animated discussion included connections between what students had experienced by reading aloud locally in the schools and what they had watched in the movie. It was a wonderful first event for this dynamic team!

Tutoring Training

February 10, 2011

Martin Religious Center Classroom 200

The WE LEAD Children and Youth team held a tutoring trainingworkshop open to all Wesleyan students who are currently working with children in the community or desire to do so in the future. Adam Loudin, former Director of Education at a Sylvan Learning Center in Bloomington, Indiana, offered the training. He discussed general tips and tricks for tutoring including getting to the root of the problem, working with parents (if possible), and behavior management. He also went through step-by-step strategies for teaching beginning reading.

Laura File offered the following: “I’m proud of the amount of people that came. I was also excited about the amount of practical information that was shared. We got a lot of really good feedback from the participants, and the majority of them said they felt confident that they could apply the information in a tutoring situation. I believe one thing that contributed to this was the way Adam asked participants about the kid(s) they were tutoring and talked through a plan of action for that individual. He not only gave us information about general tips and tricks, but useful personalized advice.”

Overall, the training was successful and effective as evidenced by the feedback forms collected. The WE LEAD Children and Youth team plans to offer another tutoring training this fall with a focus on beginning math.