• Events Calendar
• A personal message from Peter Sloss
• JCL is growing with its partners
• From the new SF Director…
• Tutor Profile: Jerilyn Gelt
• Tips for Tutors
• Thank You!

A personal message from Peter Sloss

Chair of the JCL Advisory Committee

People sometimes ask me how I got involved in tutoring. When I started to think about retiring, I knew I would have to do something for the community that was different from what I had done before. After much thought, I decided that helping kids succeed in school and become productive and satisfied adults would be the most constructive thing I could do. This proved to be even truer than I had anticipated.

Initially, I volunteered in San Francisco middle schools. However, when JCL was started in the Bay Area, and I was asked to serve on its Advisory Committee, I switched to tutoring fourth graders in reading. Serving the community is a must for all of us, and spending an hour reading with a nine (or six or eight) year old is as enjoyable a way of doing it as any I can imagine. Some of my students have definitely progressed in their reading skills; some others are more doubtful; but they have always been fun to be with.

Each week I look forward to the time I will spend with my students, these hours are among the best of my week. I enjoy them so much that I even volunteered to work in summer school, because three whole months without the students was not a pleasant prospect. Actually, summer school wasn’t long enough for me. Most of you who read this Newsletter probably know what I am talking about. If you don’t I urge you to try spending an hour or more out of your week reading with a child. I’m pretty sure you will become addicted to it too.

I believe my efforts are rewarding for the students, but I know without a doubt that nothing I have ever done has been more rewarding for me personally.

JCL is growing with its partners

At JCL, we are convinced that there are lots more people in the Bay Area who would enjoy tutoring and find it a satisfying way of performing Tikkun Olam. To make this process more effective and efficient, JCL has increasingly turned to partners who work together with us. These organizations have the members who want to volunteer and the ability to mobilize and inspire them, and JCL has the staff and know-how to train the tutors and find tutoring positions for them. Our partners have included synagogues such as Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco, Temple Sinai People of the Book in Oakland, and Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills, to name just a few.

There are also a diverse group of organizations, both Jewish and non-Jewish, including the Jewish Community High School of the Bay, the Experience Corps, and the Junior League of Oakland. The exact nature of the services and support provided by JCL to the partner varies with the need of each organization and its members, but the overall goal of JCL and its partners is the same—to enable more and more volunteers to tutor more kids in need of help and to provide the tutors with the tools they need to be effective and satisfied with the great service they are providing to future generations.

If you belong to or know of an organization that might be interested in helping its members to become reading tutors, please pass this on to one of the JCL staff members.

From the new SF Director…

By Becky Burgheimer, JCL SF Director

Hello JCL-ers! My name is Becky Burgheimer and it is a great pleasure to introduce myself to you as the new director of JCL in San Francisco, taking over from Julia Ellis.

I am a native San Franciscan (a product of 13 years in San Francisco’s public school system!), though I also worked in nonprofit in Israel for several years. I hold a BA from UC Santa Barbara in Religious Studies and an MA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Anthropology. Previous to joining JCL, I coordinated San Francisco’s annual Israel in the Ballpark festival, and before that worked as a grant writer for the New Israel Fund.

Being back in the Bay Area, I am very excited to be taking on the position of director of JCL and getting re-engaged with the Jewish community and schools of San Francisco. Everyone I’ve encountered so far—the JCL staff, advisory committee, and staff at our tutoring sites—has been wonderful, and I look forward to you meeting you: JCL’s dedicated tutors and supporters!

This year is getting off to a fantastic start—we’ve held a series of very successful trainings, put out exciting promotional materials, and are gearing up for Kung Pao Kosher Comedy and Chopshticks over the holidays. I hope to see you all there, and in March at our annual workshop.

Tutor Profile: Jerilyn Gelt

Collected by Shirley Feldman, East Bay Director

In this installment of the Tutor Times we are pleased to highlight the contributions of Jerilyn Gelt, a longtime volunteer tutor and active member of the JCL Advisory Committee.

Jerilyn made her way out West from New Hampshire to Iowa, Minnesota, and Colorado before settling in San Francisco. She has spent most of her career with the State of California’s Public Employment Relations Board. However, anyone who knows Jerilyn can attest to her wonderful sense of style, so it is no surprise to learn that she once considered becoming an interior designer. In recent years, she started a business on the side importing home accessories from the Philippines, which satisfies her passion for home design.

In her spare time, Jerilyn has always volunteered—at hospitals and the San Francisco MOMA before joining JCL. Her work with us began one Friday night when she was talking to the daughter of a friend on the phone, who was regaling her about a wonderful book. Jerilyn said, “Isn’t it wonderful when you’re reading a book and you just don’t want it to end?” The girl’s response was, “Yes, and sometimes you just want to be in the book.” Jerilyn was touched. The next day, she attended Shabbat services at Congregation Beth Sholom, and Rabbi Alan Lew’s sermon that morning just happened to be an endorsement of the Jewish Coalition for Literacy. Since Jerilyn loves kids, she figured it was meant to be and signed on.

Jerilyn began tutoring at the Chinatown Beacon, but now volunteers at the Ernest Ingold Boys & Girls Club. She has been reading with an 11-year-old girl named Jemila for two years. Jerilyn tries to make reading fun for Jemila, constantly encouraging her and searching out books that are both interesting and at her reading level.

Over the years, Jerilyn has become acquainted with Jemila’s mother, whom she describes as very supportive. With her mother’s permission, Jerilyn has taken Jemila on two outings: one to see The Lion King, and the other to visit some sights around San Francisco. This latter excursion was inspired by JCL’s Bringing Literacy to Life conference with Ron Berman, author of The Adventures of Sasha the San Francisco Sea Lion. After reading the book with Jemila, Jerilyn took her to see some of the famous San Francisco sites cited in the book, such as Coit Tower and Lombard Street. Also, along with Jemila’s mother, Jerilyn visited Jemila’s school for their end-of-the-year show, in which Jemila had a dancing part.

Jerilyn likes tutoring at the Boys & Girls Club. She describes the kids there as rambunctious and fun. During the summer, she works less with Jemila, but continues to come to the Club and gets to know and read with other kids. She says the Club is packed during the summer, especially since budget cuts have curtailed the public schools’ summer programs.

Of her tutoring experience, Jerilyn said, “When you do work in the community, you broaden and enrich your own life.” Working with local children has expanded her knowledge of the city’s varied populations: “We all say how much we love San Francisco’s diversity, but what we really mean by that is we love eating in different ethnic restaurants.” Tutoring at the Chinatown Beacon and Boys & Girls Club has introduced her to the city’s true cultural diversity. She loves being around the kids, seeing the world from their perspective.

Ultimately, Jerilyn wanted to get more involved and joined JCL’s Advisory Committee. Where other organizations didn’t complement Jerilyn’s sense of her Jewish identity, JCL has brought her closer to Judaism and served as her entrée into San Francisco’s Jewish community.

Thank you, Jerilyn, for your wonderful work and serving as an excellent model of everything a tutor and committee member can be!

Tips for Tutors

by Natalie Bivas, JCL Reading Specialist

When Your Student Makes a Reading Error

As your child learns to read, he will make mistakes. As a tutor, you want the child to learn how to monitor his mistakes and to correct them. When he makes a mistake, you want to draw his attention to either the phonetic elements of the misread word, or to the meaning of the sentence, or to the structure of our language. There are three little questions to ask a child when he makes a mistake that will help him notice his errors:

• Does that look like ______?
• Does ______ make sense?
• Would we say it like that?

Let’s look at examples of these errors of phonics, meaning and English syntax one by one, and ways to help the child correct them. These examples are actual errors my reading students made just this week. First, let’s consider an error in phonics. Imagine the child reads: The cat crossed the road. However, street, not road, is the word in the book. The child has thought about the meaning and structure of the text, but has not paid attention to the letters of the misread word. Point to the word road and ask, “Does this look like the word street? What would I see at the beginning of the word street?” You should elicit from the child that he should see an ’s’ at the beginning of the word and a ‘t’ at the end. Have him reread the sentence with the correct word.

Let’s try an example of an error of meaning. Imagine the child reads: I look to eat pizza. The child may notice some similarities between look and like, but chose look. This child was not thinking about what makes sense. Tell the child, “This is what you said,” and repeat his exact words. “Does that make sense? Do we look to eat pizza? What would make sense? Now read the sentence again.”

Finally, a student might make an error in syntax, often not noticing verb tense, correct form of a pronoun, or endings. A child might read: My dog likes to kiss my. The child visually confuses my with me, but also makes the syntactical error of using a possessive case pronoun instead of an objective one. You don’t need to know the rules; my obviously sounds wrong in this sentence if the child is paying attention. When a child makes an error like this, tell him, “This is what you read (repeating his exact words). Would we say it like that?” Hopefully, the child will notice that it doesn’t sound right and can reread it on his own correctly.

Here are a few more pointers: Let the child make the mistake and continue reading. Do not correct the mistake right away unless the error prevents the child from continuing. Help the child find the error at the end of the sentence, page, or story—depending on how much the error will affect the rest of the story. When you point out the mistake, instead of telling the child that he made a mistake, tell the child that he was tricked. It sounds a lot less negative. Eventually, you will be thrilled with your instruction when the child laughs, “Oh, that didn’t make any sense!” or “That didn’t sound right!” and goes back to correct himself.

Thank You!

The staff is tremendously grateful to the following people for their generous contributions to JCL:

• Sally Schuman, for composing the direct mail letter
• Maura Friedman and Stacey Simon of the Jewish Community Federation of the Greater East Bay, for creating our full-page ad in the j.
• Hallie Baron and Leslie Roque of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties, for creating our postcard and the PR materials for our Chanukah party, and for their continual help with marketing JCL
• Daniel Buckwald, for redesigning our stationary
• Jesse Burgheimer, for creating this newsletter and his design work for our Chanukah party
• Jerilyn Gelt and Gaye Seiler, for their wonderful assistance with our Chanukah party
• Joan and Tom Frenkel, owners of Bloom’s Saloon in San Francisco, who raised $2,000 for Starr King Elementary School, where Joan is a long-time tutor!