• Calendar of Upcoming Events
• A personal message from Peter Sloss
• Introducing New Advisory Committee Member Bruce McWilliams
• Book Drive Profile: David Bilsky
• Summer Carpentry & Literacy Project Profile: Larry Burgheimer
• Tutor Profile: Dave Krug, Volunteer Extraordinaire
• JCL’s 5th Annual Literacy Conference

A personal message from Peter Sloss, Advisory Committee Chair

Dear Friends,

As we come to the end of another school year, I want to thank all of our tutors, donors, staff and committee members for a job well done.

In particular, this year could be called “The Year of the Book(s).” We began with a successful campaign to help victims of Hurricane Katrina. JCL supporters donated funds sufficient to supply over 500 books to displaced children in Baton Rouge schools. Truly an act of tikkun olam. And that was just the beginning. Books have come in from synagogue book drives, day school book drives, bnai mitzvahs, the Chanukah book drive and the centerpiece project. In fact, this year JCL has collected over 5,000 books! These books have been or will be distributed to school libraries, offered to tutors for use in their tutoring sessions, or presented to individual students who may not have books at home.

We have also worked on bringing more workshops to tutors. In addition to the Annual Conference this year, our San Francisco and Peninsula offices offered workshops on Fluency and Second Language Learners. Next year several workshops will be scheduled in each of the regions, so watch the website for announcements.

However, in order to keep this program going and growing, JCL raises its budget from scratch each year. With the help of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund (JCEF) — part of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties — we receive gifts from supporting and philanthropic funds, as well as from the Federation itself. The Jewish Community Federation of the Greater East Bay also solicits gifts on our behalf. A considerable part of our funding comes from private foundations, but generosity only lasts for a limited period of time. In fact, none of our funding is guaranteed for more than a year. A smaller amount comes from individual donors.

To assure the continued vitality of our program, this amount needs to increase. I ask that each of you consider what you can contribute as an annual gift. Our volunteers are our best spokespeople; so if you have contact with a foundation, a corporation, or an individual who might be interested in supporting JCL, please let us know.

If you would like to donate online, click here and be sure to choose JCRC’s JCL Project in the Donation Designation section.

For now I wish you a good summer and hope to see you all again this coming fall in the classroom.

Click to enlarge chart

JCL was established in 1999 with a generous donation from the Jewish Community Endowment Fund of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties (JCEF). In 2000 the organization expanded to the East Bay and the Peninsula. With growth came the need for more funds, and JCL reached out to a variety of local foundations and to the Jewish Community Federation of the Greater East Bay. Much of the current funding comes from Supporting Foundations and Philanthropic Funds (donor advised funds) of the JCEF and other family foundations. A small percentage of the budget comes from individual gifts and the income-generating Centerpiece Project.

Introducing New Advisory Committee Member Bruce McWilliams

JCL is pleased to welcome Bruce McWilliams as a new member of the Advisory Committee. A devoted tutor at John Yehall Chin Elementary in San Francisco and a generous donor to the program, Bruce’s enthusiasm for JCL as an organization was noted when he joined the organizing committee for our Chanukah Book Drive Kickoff last December at the JCC. (You may remember hearing him deliver a great motivational speech for the potential tutors in the room.)

Bruce’s impressive background includes years of investment journalism at a plethora of newspapers, both in Europe and Stateside, including the Financial Times, The Times of London as well as The New York Times and The Washington Post. He has published three books on investing and financial planning, and appeared on a variety of related television programs. Before launching his journalism career, Bruce worked as a banker in New York and later Switzerland, where he served as a Citibank Vice President.

A native Californian, Bruce holds MBAs in Finance and Business Economics from The Wharton School. Beyond the considerable time he invests in JCL, Bruce currently works as a representative of his family business, Stepstone, Inc., which produces precast concrete products.

Bruce brings a vast array of skills to JCL and we are honored and excited to have him on our team. Welcome, Bruce!

Book Drive Profile: David Bilsky

By Jennifer Beck

David Bilsky poses with East Bay Director Jennifer Beck and a few of the 2,150 books he collected for East Bay schools.

When David Bilsky’s older brother and sister had their Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, their mother asked them what they wanted to do as their community service project. David’s brother decided to collect soup cans for the hungry and his sister chose to collect toys for underprivileged children. David wanted to collect books. This idea stemmed from David’s long-standing love of reading, and his desire to help others, “When I found out that there were children in the East Bay who didn’t have books of their own, I was amazed.”

His mom, Monica Cotik, introduced David to the Jewish Coalition for Literacy in November 2005, and from that point on a wonderful partnership evolved. David, a student at Walnut Creek Intermediate (WCI) and a member of Congregation B’nai Shalom in Walnut Creek, began utilizing his school and Jewish community to help him see his goal of collecting 1,500 books by his Bar Mitzvah in March.

To find 1,500 books, David canvassed his neighborhood, passing out book collection bags with notes explaining his tikkun olam (“repairing the world”) project. He collected books at WCI and at B’nai Shalom. He and his mom even went ‘dumpster diving’ (several times!) when they saw that the Alameda Public Library was discarding old, but still readable books.

In the end, David didn’t make his goal of 1,500 books. He surpassed it—donating 2,150 books to the East Bay JCL! When asked if he learned anything from his experience, David responded, “When you’re doing something good for the community, a lot of people take notice. The community really helped me reach my goal.” As anyone who has participated in a community service project knows, helping others is not just a wonderful mitzvah, but it is a lot of fun too. “I was happy to help people and I spent a lot of time reading!”

Although David was Bar Mitzvah’ed in March, his commitment to fighting illiteracy is far from over. In the fall, David will begin tutoring at Fair Oaks Elementary School in Pleasant Hill. JCL and the children of the East Bay are certainly lucky to have someone as dedicated to the cause of reading as David.

Summer Carpentry & Literacy Project Profile: Larry Burgheimer

Larry Burgheimer is a tutor at McLaren Child Development Center. He developed a special carpentry project for the children there, which combines his own love of working with his hands together with improving reading, comprehension, and life skills. With summer approaching, we asked him to tell us about the project—a great example of how literacy can be introduced into fun vacation activities.

Larry Burgheimer encourages McLaren students Tre’Von and Makeda as they read the instructions for building their model ships

I have volunteered at McLaren Child Development Center since September 2004. McLaren is an after-school and summer program located in McLaren Park next to the Sunnydale Housing Project in the Southeastern part of San Francisco. It’s a tough area of the city, and many of the students at the center are living in difficult circumstances; many have lost family members to street violence. The children at McLaren are divided between two classrooms—one with kindergarten through 2nd graders, one with 3rd to 5th graders. They are of diverse ethnicities: African-American, Hispanic, and Asian. I work with the older group of 20 students who are supervised by one regular teacher and one assistant.

I have never been a teacher; my background includes engineering, systems analysis, and property management. I am now retired and the father of two adult children living in San Francisco.

My regular tutoring schedule is Mondays from 3:00 to 5:00 pm. The kids are frequently tired from the long school day when they arrive, are given a snack, and then do their homework. The teachers assist with homework and ensure that all of the children are engaged in making progress toward its completion. I have one regular student I work with, and an additional three or four I frequently read with, depending on whether they show up, as attendance is inconsistent. I spend an hour or more with each student, contingent upon their needs and attention span.

After one school year of tutoring, I decided to continue volunteering during the summer. Most of the children at McLaren spend all day at the center during the summer months. They are there late into the afternoon, until they’re picked up by working parents, siblings, or grandparents.

Project Development
During the summer, when there is no homework pressing, the teachers have a more difficult time keeping the children occupied and behaving in an acceptable manner. Convincing the older ones to want to read or be read to becomes a more daunting task. Considering this challenge, I remembered a project I led in my children’s elementary school classes some 20 years ago. The project was to build a model steamship from raw materials. Since manual training is not being supported by the public school system, and in many cases is not accessible to public school kids, I decided to pilot the project again with the older students and incorporate more reading into the process. Most of the children who have participated thus far had never worked with tools until they began this project.

McLaren students Tre’Von Patterson and Makeda Mack

Most material read by students of higher grammar school age is either fiction, non-fiction, or instructions for math problems or homework assignments. One life skill I feel is particularly important is deciphering specific, detailed instructions for completing forms, applications, product assembly, and job assignments.

In the past, I had explained the steamship construction with oral instructions; however, this time I decided to prepare written instructions. There were three parts to the instructions, the first being a description of all of the tools and materials required for the project. Each child was expected to read the description list and physically identify each item on the list with the tools and materials in front of them. The second part was a list of safety rules that each student was required to read to the other students. If there was a violation of any of the safety rules, the student was told that they would be dismissed from the project. The third part was a step-by-step list of all of the tasks, in the exact sequence needed to complete the project. The students had to tackle measurements, fractions, and geometrical angles, as well as tool and material identification. It required a lot of concentration to keep track of which instruction they were working on, and which they had completed. If they wondered what was missing and what wasn’t working right, they had to go back to the instructions and re-read what they had missed or forgotten. The kids quickly realized the focus required to remain on task and remember the key information in each instruction.

The Project
I furnished all of the tools and materials needed to build the model ships. The classroom teacher selected the students, two at a time, starting with the oldest and most cooperative. Both boys and girls did the project whether they were cooperative or not. Most were eager to have their turn and the younger ones kept asking when they would get a chance to build their model ship. As each group of two students started the assignment, they soon found that they could work for two to three hours continuously with no breaks and without losing interest.

They learned to identify and select each of the wooden board sizes for each part of the ship. They discovered how much physical effort it takes to saw through a board, drill a hole, and hammer a nail in straight. When their ship was assembled, they got to paint it two colors (gray and silver) and figured out how to get full paint coverage without streaks. The best part was they had an end product to take home, a model they had constructed with their own two hands.

I plan to do the project again this summer and include students who didn’t have a turn last summer, as well as children new to the program. Hopefully, I will be able to come up with a second woodworking project this summer for those who have already completed a model ship.

Thank you for sharing your project, Larry! You are an inspiration—to us at JCL and to the kids you work with, who are practicing their reading and learning vital life skills, all while having a good time.

Tutor Profile: Dave Krug, Volunteer Extraordinaire

The East Bay Jewish Coalition for Literacy didn’t find Dave Krug, rather, he found us on his long (and far from completed) road of volunteerism. How his involvement with JCL and Fair Oaks Elementary School in Pleasant Hill developed is a great story, highlighting the close connections between schools in need, Jewish communities, the non-profit world and all those who make this world a much brighter place.

In March of 2005, while attending a Democratic Club meeting in San Ramon, Dave heard two presenters speak about Fair Oaks Elementary School and of the tremendous need the school has for practically everything: funds, books, volunteers, and supplies.

Soon after, Dave contacted the principal of Fair Oaks offering his services. After attending a PTA meeting and meeting key staff, he started volunteering in a 3rd grade teacher’s room, helping specific students build literacy skills.

At around the same time, Dave, a member of Congregation B’nai Shalom in Walnut Creek, became involved in the temple’s tikkun olam (social action) committee. There he learned that the temple was a member of the Contra Costa Interfaith Housing Coalition, which had acquired the Garden Parks Apartments and was in the process of renovating the building units to allow formally homeless residents to move in. B’nai Shalom had no liaison to the housing coalition, so Dave took up the reins. After years of work, what were once old and dilapidated buildings are now attractive apartments, housing 27 families, with a brand new swimming pool and multi-purpose room.

Dave’s involvement with the project did not end once the families moved in, but his commitment grew as he saw the immense need for services they required. He joined the after-school program at Garden Parks, tutoring the children who lived there. As many of the Garden Parks children attend Fair Oaks Elementary, which is located directly across the street, Dave now divides his time between tutoring at the school and at the Apartment’s after-school program.

Dave’s desire to help those students who need extra attention and academic assistance is infectious—and that’s a good thing, as the school remains in dire need of assistance as shown by their low test scores and low-income status. Dave brought Fair Oaks to JCL’s attention, and we have held two tutor trainings at B’nai Shalom to recruit more volunteers for the upcoming school year. Dave and his wife Rachel, a retired special education teacher, spend one full morning each week in a classroom team-teaching small groups of students. They even attended a class field trip, and brought along their own friends as chaperones!

Next fall, Fair Oaks Elementary will have a group of volunteers from JCL tutoring in the after-school program—all thanks to Dave Krug. He has made a real place for himself at the school, which is clear from the students’ excited reactions when he and Rachel walk into the classroom. The JCL is honored to work with someone as dedicated to the cause of volunteerism as Dave, and we canít wait to collaborate on more literacy projects in the future. Thank you, Dave!

JCL’s 5th Annual Literacy Conference

Collaborations and Connections

On March 19, 2006 approximately 70 tutors, teachers, school leaders, JCL staff, and volunteers met for a day-long conference to acquire new tutoring skills, practice literacy-related activities, and hear from those in the education field as they shared their experiences and insights into California’s schools.

Our day began with a panel discussion, facilitated by Bessie-Stewart Ross, a semi-retired principal (who still manages to help lead a school and coach future principals). Conference participants heard from Bay Area teachers as they spoke about their interactions with tutors in their classrooms, and the challenges they encounter in the face of No Child Left Behind and greater emphasis on standardized test results. For those of us intimately familiar with schools, but often unable to spend time with our classroom teachers or after-school coordinators, this was a welcome glimpse into the daily lives of teachers and an opportunity to hear about educational issues from their unique perspectives.

Following the panel discussion, participants chose from three workshop options: Joan Green, JCL’s own Reading Specialist, led a session on reading comprehension; Anne Prozan, a teacher at Daniel Webster Elementary in San Francisco, facilitated a session focusing on fluency; and Ruth Maginnis, a San Francisco librarian, introduced a wealth of non-fiction literature to her attendees.

After a delicious lunch and a few words by Amy Utstein (Director of the Volunteer Action Center, Jewish Community Federation of the Greater East Bay), volunteers met with actors from the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts who introduced different engaging writing techniques to incorporate into their tutoring sessions.

We are so grateful to our planning committee and the vendors who helped organize this fantastic event and provided all of the wonderful food we enjoyed! We want to make sure the following people and places are recognized for their love and commitment to JCL and all of you—our tutor community:

• Thank you to the wonderful JCL-ers who helped organize the Conference: Ted Bamberger, Joan Green, and Marilyn Nebenzahl.
• Phillip Prock and Serena of Books Inc.
• Izzy’s Brooklyn Bagels
• Dina Man of Dina’s Kosher Catering
• Megan Shean and the staff of the Jewish Community High School of the Bay