Welcome
Connecting students and reading mentors to build critical skills and share in a love of literacy.
The Reading Hall is a San Diego-based literacy mentorship program that connects volunteer reading mentors with elementary students in historically under-resourced areas. The program provides free one-on-one support to students and aims to strengthen reading skills, grow academic confidence, and build trusted relationships.
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Reading mentors are partnered with 3rd-5th grade students, identified by their classroom teachers, who would benefit from and enjoy extra reading support. Each mentor/student pair meets online twice a week over the course of a quarter (3-4 months). Students read out loud from books and articles to strengthen fluency and discuss content with their reading mentors to deepen comprehension skills.​
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Our volunteers have prior experience working with children, and are made up of current teachers, retired teachers, and those in the field of education in a variety of capacities. All of us share a joy of reading and the belief that every student has unique gifts and great potential.
The Why
Reading is important. If you know how to read
then the whole world opens up to you.
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-Barack Obama
Strong reading skills enable students to access information across subject areas, participate in a wide range of discourse, advocate for themselves, experience the joy of reading for pleasure, and so much more. Gaining these skills isn't magic (although we do believe that reading is magical!), but rather is a combination of reading practice to develop fluency, and thinking and talking critically about literary content to develop comprehension skills.
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With both families and teachers working at one thousand percent right now, students will potentially not have as much one-on-one reading time as they typically would. Students from historically under-resourced areas face tremendous challenges, and even before COVID-19 were at an academic disadvantage. In 2019, students who were eligible for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) had an average [reading test] score that was 31 points lower than that for students who were not eligible (National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2019).
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COVID-19 has separated us in so many ways from each other, and some of our typical relationships and daily activities have shifted or been put on hold. As aspects of pre-pandemic life return, the one-on-one partnerships to enrich reading skills and build intergenerational connections will remain highly valuable. The connections we make with The Reading Hall program are of mutual benefit to both our mentors and students, helping to support academic and social-emotional learning, fight social isolation, and grow relationships around literature.
Mission
We connect experienced reading mentors with students in historically under-resourced areas of California, and focus on relationship-building and individualized reading support to improve educational equity. Our mission is to strengthen critical reading skills, increase confidence, and help to cultivate a love of literature in the children we serve.
Vision
Enriching the lives of students and mentors through a shared joy of literature.