Making a Difference

Hello fellow AmeriCorps members, my name is Jamie Bellinger. I am a member with Superior AmeriCorps, located in Houghton, Michigan in the Upper Peninsula (U.P.). This is my second year as an AmeriCorps member with Superior. Our program addresses unmet educational needs in the seven rural western counties of Michigan's U.P. by providing academic support services from preschool through high school. For both years of my AmeriCorps service, I’ve served with the Baraga, Houghton, and Keweenaw (BHK) head-start organization by assisting in three of their preschool classrooms.

While serving for this organization, one of my responsibilities is to implement the Response to Intervention (RTI) program. This program addresses students who may have behavioral problems or academic struggles. When teachers notice a concern in one of these areas they provide AmeriCorps members with intervention strategies on how to address the concern. Then the AmeriCorps member serves this student one-on-one, providing observations of progress. The objective of this program is to stop unacceptable behavior and enhance academic success. Last year the students in my building receiving RTI scores increased their scores by 39 percent in picture naming and 28 percent in rhyming, two of the three indicators of early literacy development.

During my AmeriCorps term last year, my RTI service included assisting one young student with his counting. At the beginning of the year, this student had no concept of numbers or counting. When asked to count the number of objects, the student would say random things like the name of letters and things he thought were words but didn’t make any sense. To start the intervention, I guided the student’s finger over the objects being counted and counted out loud the one-to-one correspondence as I placed the student’s finger on the objects. Next, I guided the student’s finger and had him repeat each number back to me as I counted one-to-one correspondence. Lastly, the student pointed at each object as he counted one-to-one correspondence. I was thrilled to end the year with the student counting to 11.

This year I have been helping a student to recognize letters. At the beginning of the school year, the student I am currently helping was only able to recognize the letter "B." Each day we have worked on letters by going through letter flash cards or putting together an alphabet puzzle. I am thrilled to report that my service as an AmeriCorps members has been successful for this student as well: the student can now recognize all the letters, both capital and lower case.

 I am grateful for all that I have learned and accomplished in my two years of service with AmeriCorps. Serving with Superior AmeriCorps has been a great experience that has allowed me to gain more knowledge in the education field, to make a difference in children’s lives, and develop new friendships.