TWO CLUBS JOIN TOGETHER ON LOCAL PROJECT
 

Posted by Sue Bramley (Highlands Ranch) suebramley18@gmail.com
TWO CLUBS JOIN TOGETHER ON LOCAL PROJECT
 
Five years ago, Rotary Club of Highlands Ranch realized we had to drop the dictionary project and bring our club literacy activity into the 21st century. Why? Students were learning on-line and the schools stopped teaching through paper dictionaries.
 
Enter club members Sue Bramley, Iris Price & Judy Rooney. We proposed a new program, ROTARY READERS. We identified a school, Bear Canyon Elementary, and worked with the senior 1st grade teacher, Heidi Pepper. So began our entrée into weekly volunteer visits to assist the teachers with their students’ reading.
It was definitely a collaboration – members & teachers – fleshing out how to go about this. It meant a bit of planning on the educator’s part, as they had projects prepared for us to work with each week - be it magnetic boards, letter combos, flash cards, alphabet games…and actual reading! We had a set day and visited weekly, September to early May.
 
Year two, Judy’s daughter-in-law, Emmie Rooney, was a teacher at Sedalia Elementary in Douglas County.  Her school has over 50% of their students eligible for the federally subsidized lunch program due to low family income. They could really use similar help.
 
So we expanded into reading programs in two schools. The upside was we realized how much we could help Sedalia Elementary and adopted them!  We’ve donated gift baskets for their fundraiser, provided Teacher’s Day breakfasts, created a Rotary Reader library (at both schools), read weekly and hosted first-grade pizza parties at the end of the school year for all children, whether they were ‘readers’ or not.
 
But weekly visits at two schools was taxing to fill. Since Sedalia Elementary was half way between Rotary Club of Highlands Ranch & the Castle Rock High Noon Club we thought a collaboration would be ‘beneficial to all concerned’. Their president elect had been a member of our club for several years prior to a move to Castle Rock. So we called John & Joyce Volp and proposed working together.
 
Our 2 clubs have just completed our first year, divvying up the responsibility every other month. We are happy to report that it was a major success! The Castle Rock High Noon Club picked up the reigns and ran with it, loved it as much as we did, and a co-op project came to life!