Thanks to all the LMU Lions who helped out at Ascension this fall!
Several members of the freshman Theology class at Loyola Marymount University provided after school tutoring for our students this semester. This support from LMU is invaluable to keeping our students on track for performance throughout the year.
In addition, LMU’s Bookworm project is a core part of our school. The Bookworm Project is a grassroots early childhood intervention program developed on a shoestring budget in a university-schools partnership to fill the achievement gap between high- and low-income children in the community. Our goal is to prevent reading failure by bringing at-risk children up to grade-level by the end of their kindergarten year. Supported entirely by the generosity of the university, philanthropic organizations, and the community, the Bookworm Project supplements regular instruction with evidence-based early reading assistance to children at risk for developing reading problems. The program targets programs in the Los Angeles area with high proportions of low-income and immigrant children.
Tutors work one-on-one with their assigned students using special techniques that have been proven to help children learn to read. We provide training and supervision in these play-based techniques. Because many of the children do not have books of their own, the tutors regularly give the children donated gift-books to keep.
One of the goals of The Bookworm Project is to stimulate interest in LMU students in education-related careers, especially with children from poor backgrounds who simply need some extra attention and directed help in order to become successful students. Many of our students go on to careers in psychology, social work, education, public-service law, and non-profit business.
