About two dozen Mount Saint Mary College teacher candidates and just as many local children recently shared their semester-long projects with friends and family at the Newburgh Armory Unity Center.
COVID-19 couldn't stop Mount Saint Mary College teacher candidates from enriching the lives of local children last semester.
Through the Newburgh Armory Unity Center and Mount Saint Mary College Literacy Program, students in the Mount's Education program worked in small groups or one-on-one with local children to help build their literacy skills. The work took place both in person and virtually, and culminated with a mixed modality presentation at the Armory for the young students' parents and families.
The Mount students were led by Rebecca R. Norman, associate professor of Education and Graduate Program Coordinator at the college.
"It's really important for teacher candidates to get to know their community and get to know their students," she explained.
Created by the children with the aid of the Mount students, the presentations ranged from movie reviews, history reports, and building websites to video game concepts, geography lessons, and "how-to" tutorials.
Troy Watson (photographed with his mentee on right) of Marlboro, N.Y., who is majoring in the Mount's graduate Literacy 5-12 program, was happy to use his teaching skills to serve the community.
"Each of the kids had different things that they needed improvement on, but almost all of them improved their confidence levels, whether that was with spelling, writing, or reading," he said.
Watson added that the experience was just as informative for the young students as it was the teacher candidates.
"It broadened my horizons," Watson noted. "As I am mainly focused on teaching high and middle school students, I am less informed about the strategies that an elementary teacher might use to tackle problems surrounding more basic literacy skills, like decoding and retelling. Students who struggle with these more basic literacy skills exist in both middle and high school, so it's good that I have those skills in my toolbox now."
Dedicated teacher candidates from the Mount also taught poetry to local children at the Armory remotely on Saturday mornings. Under the tutelage of Janine Bixler, professor of Education, the Mount students helped local children to paint pictures of different times of day. Then, the children wrote poems to go along with their art.
At the end of the program, their paintings and poems were published as bookmarks and shared with three area libraries for their patrons to receive when they check out books: The Armory's library, Mount Saint Mary College's Kaplan Family Library and Learning Center, and the Newburgh Free Library.
The Newburgh Armory has been changing young lives since 2010. From accessible literacy courses to helping children explore career paths, the Armory hosts a variety of educational programs on Saturdays and weekday afternoons. For more information about the Newburgh Armory Unity Center, visit www.newburgharmory.org, email info@newburgharmory.org, or call 845-245-4035.