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Lawyers hit the books, with their young charges

Third-graders get a hand with reading skills from kindhearted legal types just in time for the oft-feared FCAT.

By RITA FARLOW
Published February 12, 2006

ST. PETERSBURG - Lucas Fleming leaned over the table, following along as Kyle Jackson, 8, read aloud the story of Robin Hood.

"Let's talk about Robin Hood. Who was he? What did he do for people?" Fleming asked.

"He helped people." Kyle answered.

"Why did they need help?" Fleming asked.

"Because some people are poor."

The lawyer and third-grader were reading The Adventures of Robin Hood as retold by Joanne Mattern in the library at Tyrone Elementary School on Wednesday. Each week, they get together for an hour to work on vocabulary, fluency and comprehension - skills that will help Kyle as he prepares for the FCAT this month. The weekly program, Lawyers for Literacy, pairs lawyers and other professionals with third-graders to work on their reading skills.

"The students were basically selected by teachers' suggestions of students they thought would benefit from additional help with reading," said reading specialist Rebekah Linn.

Linn compiled materials and a lesson plan and helped train the 10 professionals working with students at Tyrone. Each session includes a timed reading exercise, in which students read the same passage three times for one minute. This is done to increase familiarity and prosody - the patterns of stress and intonation in a language, Linn said.

They also work on vocabulary exercises and later spend an hour on reading comprehension. After the work is done, students and their professional mentors spend time on other activities, like playing checkers.

"The reading is important, certainly, in helping the child, but the relationship has taken on a dimension that I didn't know it would," Fleming said of the bond forged between him and Kyle.

Fleming started the group in 2003 at Perkins Elementary School. The group recently obtained nonprofit status and is nearing completion of its first 12-week session at Tyrone. Fleming said he felt compelled to start the program after working for years in the legal field as a criminal defense attorney and former state prosecutor.

"There's a part of me that wanted to give back to the community. As an attorney I'd seen a lot of problems with kids who aren't educated that get into the criminal justice system. I started to think, "What am I doing to help prevent these kids from coming into the system in the first place?' This is a way, on the front end, to get involved and to help keep kids out of the criminal justice system," he said.

Fleming points to a grim U.S. Department of Education statistic: that 85 percent of minors in the juvenile courts are illiterate. Further, Fleming said, students who fail a grade are 50 percent more likely to drop out of school. Because third-graders who fail the FCAT are often not promoted to fourth grade, Fleming said he thought early intervention could keep some children in school.

Some students read well but need help learning new words. Dana Greenbaum Douglas, a lawyer, said she found that her third-grader, Samantha Webb, 8, read fluently until she came across a word she didn't recognize. "I think she was more likely, in the beginning, to just ignore the words she didn't know, and now she's more open to ask, "What does this mean?"' Douglas said.

Linn, the reading specialist, said that all of the children in the program have shown improvement in various areas, but she could not pinpoint Lawyers for Literacy as the sole cause. Linn also credited classroom instruction and said the program could prove more beneficial if it targeted first- and second-graders, who are developing basic reading skills.

Fleming hopes to expand the program next year to five schools in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. He plans to establish relationships with schools this spring. "First, we need to identify the kids that need help and then find out what kind of help these kids need," he said.

The weekly sessions are held from November to late February. Fleming requests commitment and consistency from the professionals he recruits, mostly through word of mouth.

Hillsborough County Judge Nick Nazaretian, the only judge in the program, puts in his time to help a child.

"(The kids) are meeting people who have been successful in their lives, and they can emulate that," he said. "I try not to miss (any sessions), because they look forward to that opportunity."

Fleming said he has noticed great improvement in Kyle's reading since the sessions began. "If I can just help one child get through, that would be enough for me," Fleming said.

[Last modified February 12, 2006, 00:25:19]