Leigh Wallace, a mentor with the Colquitt County Educational Foundation, works with her mentee Ja’Lisa Young. The CCEF is an early childhood literacy mentoring program that primarily assists local students in kindergarten to second grade.

MOULTRIE, Ga. – The Colquitt County Education Foundation is gearing up for the new school year to help the Colquitt County School District improve reading literacy.

Primarily assisting local students in kindergarten to second grade, the CCEF is an early childhood literacy mentoring program.

Its mission is to increase the literacy rates of Colquitt County children and youth through mentoring and support of educational innovation in the classroom and the community and to ensure a quality workforce pipeline in Colquitt County, according to the CCEF website.

CCEF Executive Director Brad Gregory and Literacy Mentor Coordinator Dale Rickett said this year’s mentors will tentatively start assisting students on Sept. 12. 

“What we wanted to do was to give the teachers [the month of] August to get their kids in their routines,” Rickett said in an interview Tuesday. “Then they [will] do the benchmark testing, so that’s going to help us to identify what students need.”

The pilot CCEF mentoring program started tat Cox Elementary School with five mentors from January to April. 

“We appreciate how well we were received and accepted at Cox Elementary,” Gregory said. 

Rickett said the program saw growth in students’ MAP assessments (a computerized test of the students’ skills in mathematics and reading). The mentors helped students with sight words, letter recognition and sounds. 

She hopes the CCEF can assist Cox Elementary School again along with Stringfellow Elementary and a few more elementary schools this year. Which schools the CCEF assists are based on the specific needs of the schools, she said. 

With a teaching background of 14 years, Rickett witnessed what students need. 

“What I saw is a lot of our students are severely below, there are a lot of interventions for them,” she said, “and they have a lot of extra resources. What I saw were the students that were on that line — we call them ‘bubble kids’ — those students didn’t necessarily get as many resources and were sometimes overlooked. 

“Those are the children that we really want to focus on,” she added. “The kids that just need a little extra support and they’re able to get on grade level, or they’re actually able to soar past grade level if they can.”

Gregory added, “There may be a teacher who has 20 kids in the classroom, who doesn’t have the time to do some of the things that our mentors are able to do individually [or] one-on-one with that student.” 

“We just want to find ways where we can insert ourselves to supplement in a way that helps them,” he said. “Most people don’t realize it but the school system has some great people that know how and what to do. It’s just a matter of us doing what we can to support them because I strongly feel that our school system knows what the needs are, and they have a way to get there. What we’re trying to do is just fill in those few little cracks that we can from the side to help them get there.”

The foundation currently has approximately four trained mentors. Six others will participate in training Aug. 25. The training will be held in the Colquitt County School District Board of Education room from 12:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. 

Gregory added, “The training that we provide gives them all of the tools to go in there and really have a very meaningful experience with that child where the child actually gets so much learning from that. We train people that I think are just great positive role models, and that’s a big piece of it.”

Anyone is welcome to sign up to be a mentor or attend training. Before entering the schools, mentors must complete a background check. The mentors will assist students during the school day.

“We are flexible, and we can work around the mentor’s schedule. It’s one time a week for about 45 minutes to an hour is the obligation,” Rickett said. 

For more information about the CCEF or to learn how to become a mentor, please visit www.brightercolquitt.org.