BROKEN ARROW, Okla. — The semester has ended for Northeastern State University-Broken Arrow (NSU-BA) students and that means a semester of tutoring elementary students in reading has also wrapped up, furthering the university’s tradition as a reading skills resource to surrounding communities.

The Fall semester was the first time students were able to work with Rhoades Elementary students in Broken Arrow.

Dr. Stephan Sargent and his reading education classes visited the elementary school each week to provide one-on-one reading tutoring. Each lesson is specifically tailored for the child they are instructing.

“I think the most rewarding part for me is to see students who are scared to death to teach reading lessons start feeling comfortable when they know how to teach a child to read,” Sargent said.

For many NSU education students, this is their first hands-on experience with teaching. This allows them to sharpen their skills on a smaller scale before student teaching the following semester and overseeing a whole class.

“Working with the students in the reading clinic has impacted me by seeing what a difference you can make in one student’s life,” NSU early childhood education senior Abigail Leffingwell said. “I think the reading clinic has impacted the students by showing them how learning can be fun. Lots of students came into this thinking they weren’t going to like it, but soon they learned that our time together would be filled with fun games and activities in reading.”

Sargent said he is proud to have a hand in training the next generation of teachers.

“We’re preparing amazing reading teachers for the Broken Arrow community at a time of a terrible teacher shortage,” Sargent said. “The second thing is we’re providing free clinical reading services to children who likely could not have tutoring otherwise. I think both of those are amazing services to the community.”

To learn more about the Broken Arrow Reading Center and other K-12 outreach programs at NSU-Broken Arrow, click here.

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