Elderly Give Boost to Appalachian Reading Project

Some children have hardly even been exposed to real conversation, said Alisa Huff, the "reading recovery" coordinator at Cross Creek, who helps train and supervise the nine senior volunteers who work in the school.

The grandparents get a small stipend of a bit more than $2 an hour from Save the Children, which receives charitable donations.

Home for some of these children is a mobile home parked with a few other similar dwellings in an isolated "holler" -- a narrow valley that cuts into the forested hills. A few stray dogs run around the muddy clearings where the homes stand. Horses munch on grass, and the area is strewn with dozens of wrecked and abandoned vehicles, plundered for their parts.

Sometimes, the children confide in the grandparents, telling them that "Daddy hit Mommy last night," or "Daddy went to sleep with his girlfriend."

Dorothy Seals, 76, once heard a child say that her home was robbed the previous night, "but they didn't get nothin' but Mom's drugs."

At Cross Creek, only 44 percent of fourth-graders (9 and 10 years old) are reading at grade level and only 35 percent of seventh-graders (12 to 13). In mathematics, the situation is worse, with 74 percent in the fifth grade below the required standard.

But the grandparents are making a difference. At the lower grades, where they have been working one-on-one, scores are rising and most students are at or near grade level.

Loretta Shepherd was thinking of retiring after 36 years as a teacher. But she decided to stay on at Jones Fork so that she could teach the first generation of grandparent-trained students to reach her classroom.

Now she thinks half of them could go to college.

But without parental backing, this may be a vain hope. "If the expectation from the home is not there, it is not going to happen," Slone said. "I see kids who are straight-A students who drop out of high school, and that potential is never fulfilled."

The grandparents themselves are among the biggest beneficiaries. "It's good for us. It gives us a reason to get up in the morning. And the kids are very good to me. I get hugs every day. It means a lot," Fraser said.

In a school district in which an estimated 40 percent of the adults are illiterate, it is not surprising that some children initially resist efforts to be educated.

Fraser recalled one child, whose father was illiterate, who said he didn't care if he learned to read or not. That child is now 12 and said he sometimes reads to his father.