Students with behavioral or learning disabilities are important resources for their community. Through two service-learning projects (reading to elementary-school students and interviewing senior citizens), special-needs students at one New Jersey middle school gained confidence in their skills and developed a sense of pride and community…

A study examined whether the characteristics of rural communities would limit success of a statewide mentoring program in Nebraska. Surveys of 1,490 students, parents, mentors, and teachers in 10 rural and 23 nonrural schools indicated similar positive changes in student behavior in rural and nonrural schools. Provision of mentors and staff by…

Service-learning (S-L) has been regarded as a relatively well-established and effective teaching pedagogy. Students who participate in S-L are more likely to learn more efficiently, more effectively, and remember more of what they have learned than their counterparts. Current studies have been done on the experiences of students in…

A study examined the influence of an intergenerational approach on the literacy development of parents and on the practice of family literacy at home. During a 3-year period, 367 families enrolled in multilingual, multiability literacy classes for at least one instructional cycle. The adult basic education classes were held in a community center…

Designed for use by volunteers in the program, this handbook describes the "Rockin' Readers" program, in which senior-citizen volunteers are matched with specifically targeted at-risk children in Alachua County, Florida, who tested below their peer group in language development and reading readiness skills. The handbook notes that each…

The first phase of Book Bridges, an English-as-a-Second Language literacy project for immigrant women and their children, was evaluated. Fifteen clients completed the first 10-week, 60-hour program designed to increase English vocabularies, give clients opportunities to express ideas in English, and provide a framework for facilitating…

A demonstration project was conducted in three diverse, multiethnic Western Pennsylvania communities to use older adult tutors to improve Head Start parents' literacy skills so that these parents could aid and encourage the development of their own children's literacy. During the project, the partnerships in two Pennsylvania counties developed and…

These two documents discuss two related family literacy projects that were conducted to develop a model for providing sustained literacy and developmental activities to economically disadvantaged families throughout Pennsylvania. The first document details the development/implementation of the Families Reading Together program, which built upon…

A family literacy program was developed for families containing young children and learning-challenged adults whose limited reading skills made it impossible for them to read aloud to their children. The program's primary objective was to upgrade the parents' reading skills and knowledge of children's literature. The program was staffed by a…

An intergenerational literacy project involving economically disadvantaged parents, their preschool children, and preservice teachers was conducted at Eastern Montana College. Parents enrolled in the Head Start and Even Start programs attended sessions at which they were trained to be literacy tutors at training meetings and/or combination…

An intergenerational literacy program was developed for 40 teenage parents and their children enrolled in an alternative education center. The program was designed to empower teenage parents to develop the emerging literacy of their children while reducing their own literacy deficiencies. The Once upon a Time-Together program acquainted teenage…

An evaluation was made of PACE (Parent and Child Education), a family literacy program initiated in Kentucky in 1986. PACE was created because of the widespread belief that the state has a serious problem with undereducation of its adult population and the belief also that this problem is the result of persistent patterns of educational failure…

An adult basic education (ABE) class was developed to help parolees of the Schuylkill County Prison develop reading, writing, and communication skills and use those skills in a community service project aimed at helping at-risk youth. Parolees were recruited into the project through county parole officers, and their reading, writing, self-esteem,…

Anecdotal reports of the protective qualities of mentoring relationships for youth are corroborated by a growing body of research. What is missing, however, is research on the processes by which mentors influence developmental outcomes. In this article, we present a conceptual model of the mentoring process along with a delineation of some of the…

This guide was developed during a demonstration project conducted in three diverse, multiethnic Western Pennsylvania communities to use older adult tutors as mentors to improve Head Start parents' literacy skills and ability to develop their children's literacy. The guide is intended to facilitate tutors' learning about family literacy and to give…