UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — As a little girl, Jaime Ellenberger loved to get lost in the imaginary worlds created by books.
“Growing up, I remember specifically reading books with my grandma,” she said. “I loved reading ‘Because of Winn-Dixie’ and Junie B. Jones books. The Nancy Drew series is always something that stuck with me and I remember reading those books up through high school.”
Having just completed her sophomore year studying childhood and early adolescent education, Ellenberger is sharing her love of reading with the young children of State College and applying what she is learning in the classroom to her position as a literacy mentor for America Reads at Penn State.
“A friend from my hometown came to Penn State and told me about America Reads,” Ellenberger said. “So I looked it up and it was perfect.”
A federal program created in 1996 by the Clinton administration, America Reads is a nationwide initiative aimed at providing reading and writing tutoring to students in pre-K through third grade. Twenty years later, the federal grant still exists and continues its mission by employing college students through the federal work-study program.
“Penn State was the first university to hire an America Reads student, and over time we have evolved to look at literacy in the broader sense,” said Emily Wolfe, coordinator of America Reads at Penn State. “It’s not just reading and writing anymore. We have environmental literacy, science literacy, health literacy, math literacy, adult literacy. We serve everybody from infants to adults, and partner with many different community organizations.”
One of those partners is Schlow Centre Region Library, where Ellenberger was placed as a literacy mentor in the spring of 2015. In her first year with the library she created “Elementary Explorers,” a literacy program geared toward elementary-aged children who visited the library.
“It started out as a book club but it wasn’t structured like a typical book club where you read a book and then come in the next week to talk about it,” she said, explaining that different kids would attend each week so the setup of a traditional book club didn’t work. To make the club more welcoming of new children, Ellenberger changed gears.
“Now it’s more of a ‘drop-in’ book club,” she said. Instead of focusing on one book, children can openly discuss their favorite books and characters or any books they are currently reading.