We would like thank our volunteers for their unwavering commitment to helping AISD students. Each year our dedicated corps of Classroom Coaches and mentors has increased steadily to more than 1,800 volunteers in 2011-12. Just one hour per week can make a difference in a student’s academic performance and self-confidence.

Though the school year has come to a close, we want to stay connected with the many volunteers that make our work possible. MeetUp is a social group we created for our volunteers and APIE staff members to catch up and discuss ways to improve our Austin community. APIE MeetUp locations and times are flexible and we welcome volunteer input on future event ideas.

Volunteers at the last MeetUp decided to pursue an outreach project to provide new books to build home libraries for low-income Austin ISD students. The critical importance of developing students’ skills as confident, fluent readers is well-documented. Researchers Anderson, Wilson, & Fielding found that the out-of-school reading habits of students have shown that even 15 minutes a day of independent reading can expose students to more than a million words of text in a year. APIE MeetUp members will select a high-needs classroom at an Austin ISD elementary school to support. The goal of the project is to provide 40 quality books per child to start their home reading library.

The dedication of the Austin community is remarkable and we are so appreciative of our APIE volunteers. We welcome you to join our MeetUp group and stay in touch this summer! For more information on how to get involved or make a donation to this home library project, please visit http://www.meetup.com/Austin-Partners-in-Education/ .

Tenzin Yulo, Development intern