• Reading Buddies
The Reading Buddies program pairs HGSE students, staff and other Harvard affiliated volunteers with second graders at the Amigos Elementary School, a dual language immersion school in Cambridge. During weeks when the second grade student group is instructed in English, Reading Buddy volunteers read aloud and share conversation with students on Thursdays below from 12:05 to 12:45pm. The Reading Buddies Program is coordinated by the HGSE Office of School Partnerships in collaboration with Cambridge School Volunteers (CSV), Inc. The HGSE Staff Advisory Committee to the Dean for Administration (SACAD) supports recruitment. Reading Buddy volunteers learn how reading aloud promotes literacy in a training session led by Amigos School educators and CSV staff. At a holiday party and at a year-end picnic for students and volunteers, each student receives a book to take home chosen by his or her buddy. To learn more about Reading Buddies, call the Office of School Partnerships at 617-496-4822 or email school_partnerships@harvard.edu .Also, please read the Harvard Gazette article on Reading Buddies (written when the program was on Tuesdays) and see the current schedule below for 2007-2008.

• Lectores y Amiguitos
Lectores y Amiguitos is a Spanish language volunteer program in which fluent Spanish speakers from HGSE and the Harvard community read to second graders at the Amigos Elementary School. Volunteers read aloud and share conversation in Spanish with students approximately every Thursday from 12:05 to 12:45pm. (Please see schedule below.) The goal of Lectores y Amiguitos is to foster a love of reading in Spanish and to give second graders the opportunity to practice their Spanish oral language and listening skills. This Spanish program is designed to complement the HGSE Reading Buddies program, in which another group of volunteers read one-on-one with students in English. Both programs are coordinated by the HGSE Office of School Partnerships, in collaboration with Cambridge School Volunteers (CSV) Inc. Through a training session led by Amigos School educators and CSV staff, volunteers in the program learn how reading aloud can promote literacy, as well as strategies and techniques useful for reading to students in their second language.

Schedule for 2007-2008: Reading Buddies and Lectores Amiguitos Sessions

• For more information on Lectores y Amiguitos and the Reading Buddies programs please call the HGSE Office of School Partnerships at 617-496-4822 and ask to speak with the Program Coordinators, or send an email to: school_partnerships@harvard.edu

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Additional Volunteer Opportunities

The Office of School Partnerships connects HGSE with school and community agencies seeking volunteers. OSP provides students and staff at the Harvard Graduate School of Education with information about volunteer opportunities in schools, after-school programs, and community agencies in the Boston and Cambridge area.

OSP promotes such work for students as a way to supplement their formal education at HGSE with experiences based in communities extending beyond the Ed School, and to contribute a broad range of support services to school students, teachers and administrators and community service projects. OSP encourages an ongoing partnership that works for the community and the graduate student, meets a defined community need, is sustainable, and entails the commitment of a semester.

Volunteers and interns support and strengthen the efforts of school districts and community agencies by working as tutors, mentors, classroom and library assistants, career speakers, project developers, curriculum planners and in the capacity of good role models.

Previous referrals have included:

• Boston Public Schools Cluster Coordinators and School Representatives
  
• BELL Foundation
  
• Boys & Girls Club of Roxbury
  
• Boston Partners in Education
  
• Boston Volunteer Bridge
  
• Cambridge Partnership for Public Education
  
• Cambridge Public Schools, Professional Development Office
  
• Cambridge School Volunteers, Inc.
  
• Citizen Schools
  
• City Year
  
• C.O.A.C.H. Program
  
• Families and Schools Working Together, Somerville Public Schools
  
• Mass Mentoring Partnership
  
• Metco Incorporated
  
• Media and Technology Charter School
  
• TechBoston
  
• Tutoring Plus
  
• Bridge to Literacy and Learning

Office of School Partnerships • Harvard Graduate School of Education 44R Brattle Street, Third Floor Cambridge, MA 02138 phone 617-496-4822 • fax 617-495-1863