Chapel of the Cross, Chapel Hill, NC

"...Weeping in the bitter agony of my heart, suddenly I heard a voice from a nearby house, chanting as if it might be a boy or girl saying and repeating over and over again, "Pick up and read. Pick up and read.'"

St. Augustine, Confessions

Imagine the quiet of a school library. The only sound comes from a table by the window. There you hear the rustling of a child's fingers shaping letters on a piece of bright carpet. A tutor smiles encouragement as the child looks at an "o" on a card and says "ah" as she wiggles her hand to suggest an octopus, a word that contains that short vowel sound. If you can picture this scene, you are watching an Augustine child beginning her biweekly lesson.

The Augustine Project offers free, 1-on-1, long-term, multi-sensory, structured tutoring to children and teens from low-income families. Its goal is to improve their skills in reading, writing, and spelling. Its tutors receive 70 hours of instruction in the Orton Gillingham/Wilson teaching approach; lessons last about 45 minutes and are given in the school setting. SUCCESS is the key word, and the results of this program, begun in 1994 by Linda McDonough at the Church of the Holy Family, are remarkable. The project has also been replicated in Houston, TX, and Winston-Salem, with Charlotte and Greensboro chapters anticipated in the next few years.

Executive Director Debbie McCarthy says. "We use the analogy of solidly laying every brick as we build the house of language. Students who struggle with reading and writing are given the keys to de-mystify the process." In this way young people at risk can take a giant step toward academic success. Debbie adds, "I love seeing what I call 'Helen Keller moments'...when a child who has struggled and felt beaten down catches on to a concept. The light and the joy on the faces of the student and tutor at such times are, for me, sacred...nothing less than the presence of Christ."

Thanks to Debbie's enthusiasm and Augustine training support, my own experience as a tutor for the past three years has been immensely rewarding. Even though I had little background in teaching elementary school children, I was amazed at the way they responded to the 1-on-1 situation and to the consistent structure of every lesson. Each day they can find success and eventually mastery. The process gives them a strategy to make sense out of symbols that often seem decipherable only by blind guessing. I am working for the second year with a very bright 3rd grader who is still concentrating on short vowel sounds, but he has begun to read 3 and 4 syllable words, such as "athletic," "insistent" and "embarrassing." He has a passion for books, especially about dinosaurs and dragons, and his treat every lesson is to look at a book I bring to him from the Chapel Hill Library.

Currently there are at least six other Augustine tutors in the Chapel of the Cross community: Laurie Alexander, Mary Chase, Robin Johnston, Mary McLean, Anna Tabor, and Katherine Dauchert, who has also replaced Deacon Martha Hart on the Augustine Project Board. Martha served for six years and comments that it's "a wonderful program that serves so many low-income children...its growth has been phenomenal in terms of the number of tutors trained and the number of children served." Many parishioners have been benefactors of the project either individually or through foundations, and last year Katie Healy, one of our Johnson interns, tutored three children and acted as assistant to the director. The Chapel of the Cross's Social Ministry Committee strongly supports the project with discretionary funds and proceeds from the ABC Sale.

The Augustine Project is now serving more than 150 students in 44 schools and after-school programs in the Triangle area. Eighty-three new tutors completed the training in 2004 - each gives 60 hours of pro bono tutoring when they finish the course - yet the number of students in need far outweighs the number of available tutors. Training sessions are offered fall and summer. Would you be interested in becoming an Augustine tutor? If you would like further information, contact Debbie McCarthy by email at augpro760@cs.com. There is also a Web site, created and maintained by Courtney McCarthy, who attended the Chapel of the Cross as a UNC sudent, at http://www.augustineproject.org.

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