Becketwood Buddies forging bonds between elders and youngsters

By IRIC NATHANSON

Jack Neal wasn’t sure what to expect when he came to Becketwood for the first time in September.

“It looked really big--like a castle,” Jack remembers.

Photo left: Ruth Halvorson is helping her Becketwood Buddy, Jack Neal, improve his reading skills. (Photo by Iric Nathanson)

Now, the Dowling fifth grader looks forward to his twice weekly visits to the castle to meet with his Becketwood Buddy, Ruth Halvorson. Jack and several of his classmates are participating in a unique project that links Dowling Elementary students who need a little help in boosting their reading skills with volunteer tutors from the Becketwood Cooperative.

The tutoring project was initiated by Wayne Tellekson, a member of the W. River Rd. cooperative.

“I had just finished reading Atul Gawande’s ‘Being Mortal’ and I was impressed with his views on aging,” Tellekson recalled. “Gawande talked about how older people need to find significance in their lives. That struck a chord with me. I knew that many of my neighbors at Becketwood had done important things during their working years, but now they weren’t as engaged with the world as they once were. I realized that we needed to help people here bring more significance into their lives.”

Tellekson decided that a tutoring project for school-age young people might be a way to re-engage his neighbors by helping them create the kind of bonds that link grandparents with their grandchildren. “Dowling School was just a few blocks away from our campus, so I decided to float the idea by Joe Rossow, Dowling’s principal. It turned out that Joe and I were on the same wavelength. He had been thinking about ways to draw on the resources here at our co-op, so that is how Becketwood Buddies was born.

Tellekson and Rossow agreed to test the idea with a pilot project that would bring Dowling fifth graders to Becketwood for help with reading. “Initially, we needed to resolve some logistical problems,” Tellekson said. “We had to get the Dowling students here to our campus and then get them back to school so they could ride the bus home. It was a little too far for the students to walk here on their own, so one of the school staff had to drive them here and then pick them up and bring them back to Dowling. That placed some limitations on the size of the program.”

Rossow and his teachers decided to select a group of fifth graders for the pilot project who could benefit from some personalized attention to improve their reading comprehension.

“They are not the children with the most serious reading deficiencies, Rossow explained. “Those children are working with our professional reading specialists. Instead, we are targeting the students who need a little extra help to move ahead with their reading skills--help they could get from a well-motivated volunteer.

“So far, we are very pleased with the program,” Rossow added. “It is giving our students a chance to develop relationships with a new set of adults who have a broad range of experiences. Over time, we hope to get some hard data from the program, but for now the relationships are important for all of us.”

Jack Neal is part of the first group of Becketwood Buddies. “I really like coming to Becketwood, and I think my reading is getting better now that I get to work with Ruth,” he said. “I only we had a longer time to read once we get here. A half an hour doesn’t seem long enough.”

Now, two months into the program, the Buddies have created quite a buzz among fifth graders, according to Paul Sarver, who teaches physical education at Dowling. “One of our Buddies kept being asked by her friends why her reading was getting better,“ Sarver reported. ‘The word is Becketwood,’ she told them. Now, a lot of the kids want to go there.”

Sarver said the tutoring project is being expanded to include two additional students, but he doesn’t expect to see further expansion at Becketwood. “We are at our capacity there, so now we will be looking at ways to bring Becketwood volunteers down to Dowling. It may not have the same feel for our students if the tutors come here, but we will be able to serve a larger group of young people on our own campus.”

“My student has gotten more enthusiastic about reading since she has started coming here,” noted Priscilla Young, one of the Becketwood volunteers “For me, that is very gratifying.”

“I don’t have children of my own, so I can’t be a grandmother,“ added another volunteer, Dee Schaefer. “ But now I know what it is like to be a grandparent. Each time, my student learns a new word, it is very thrilling. I want to tell all my friends about it,“ Schaefer said.