The Reading Center
Project Purpose/ Objective:
At the Reading Center
We are warm, welcoming, and inclusive
We benefit students personally and academically
We show up, authentically engage, and model growth.
The reading center purpose and mission
The Reading Center is a place that people go to find, seek, and receive help on academics. They receive help on tasks like time management, communication, testing strategies, before and after reading skills, retention, and more. There ultimate goal is to retain students success. They tutor students with trained peers and help one on one. At the Reading Center there is also a class that the tutors help and are the teachers for. This class is called 102R, it is where we teach students and follow up on grades and are accountable for. The Reading Center is a great place to receive success.
At the Reading Center there is an outreach program that is called the Ambassador program. In the Ambassador program it was intended to be a place that we could reach out and inform people about the Reading Center. This has not been around for very long. That is where I have come in. I had the opportunity to help them at the Reading Center. They needed help to see if they could reach out to as many of the teachers and let them know what at the Reading Center is. I have leadership opportunities that looked as inviting professor and faculty alike interested at Brigham Young University- Idaho (BYU-I), building a sustainable platform for future students to pick up every semesters. Part of the preparation for the program was designing an approved email template, Excel sheets, Excel data organizing, analyzing Excel data forms, google sheets, Microsoft teams, Microsoft sheets and team building. Along with that an extensive checklist of approvals on higher levels of Administration.
In this opportunity I was able to see and apply all that I was learning in a classroom to a work force. Some of these things are writing, leadership, and ethical responsibilities, working with other students and faculty alike.
The objective was to create and build a sustainable and recreahable program that could be repeated every semester as we get new teachers often. To be able to organize and keep it all in one place. To be able understand data and see where we are sending it with teachers. We need to inform but not annoy by sending one to many emails. Keep the teachers interested but not where they are uninterested and confused.
The Project Samples
Due to privacy restrictions I will not be able to show you the names information provided by these excels. What you see here is how we ended up separating the information that we did receive and found a way to separate it and replicate it time and time again.
Something we also worked on was the template of the email. There had to many different versions of this email. Had to be approved by many.
Challenges Encountered in Completing Project
There were many road blocks in the process of getting this approved. Because it is for the University we had to jump through many different hoops. Examples of some of these hoops would be we need to get the email approved by my mentor then had to be filtered through three tiers above him. Then finally would come back to me. By the time we got approval for the message to be sent out it was to far into the semester and they wanted to wait to launch in the beginning of the fall. At this point our priorities shifted and we then needed to focus on the back logging. For when the time came to launch it was easy and sufficient. This will make it possible for my mentor to just press copy and paste have it all done.
Project Process
At the beggining of the we were in mutiple meetings a week talking and strageying what could and could not be said in the email. We then made a survey asking employees which teachers would be intrested in more info. We then had to ask the employees to send out to there teachers and ask who would be intrested in hearing more. Lots of following up. We then made a google sheet with responses of employees and the info that had been recorded. We then were asked to transfer all data to excel and so that is where most of our time went was filing and filtering the data from google sheets to excel. As you can see in the picture down below we can filter the information that is seen. We can also organoze if nesscary. All someone have to do now is copy a certain row and they can mass prduce it. Last but not least we put this all in a file in a program called Microsoft files so that when I leave we have all in one place and can be used again.
Overview of the Experience
My experience was exciting filled with emotions of frustration. But in the end I am so happy I had this learning experience. We got the approval to go forward so that means that we have a list of 30 professors that would like an email starting in Fall semester for there students. In this email it will say what we are and where they will send there students for the help. We also made an excel sheet to track how successful this reaching out to professors is. For that was a requirement from the head of the departments. I got to watch my mentor talk briefly and get to the root of what the department was wanting. It was neat to watch that process of approval. reworking things so that it matches the vision of the Reading Center and BYU- Idaho.
Insights of the Experience I Learned
I learned allot in this project and time period was not what I thought it was going to be. I learned that when approval is not given that does not mean no. It means that you just have to take the time to reword and revise. That despite setbacks you can still move forward. This experience showed me that as I wait there is always something more you can do to make your mentor pleased. I learned the importance of showing up. My mentor was just as frustrated with the process as I was. They had to wait alongside me, but it was not helpful to complain. I instead chose to act. In this experience as we did that we were able to get it approved because of the back logging work we had done. by the time we went up through the channel we were able to get it approved for next fall. That is so exciting I won’t be able to be around to see it play out but I have full confidence in the Reading Center. I am grateful for this experience for it taught me that working with people is like what group work is sometimes. Hard but in the end the results are worth applauding for.