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Team Charleston receives award for helping local school

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. April Quintanilla
  • 437th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
CHARLESTON AIR FORCE BASE, S.C. --  Team Charleston's was presented an award by Charleston County Wednesday for stepping up and volunteering more than 500 hours to help the students of a local school improve their basic studies and behavior.

During the 2006 school year, Hunley Park Elementary asked the base for volunteers to come help their students with reading and math or for airmen to be a positive role model in their lives.

"I put this program together after talking to military spouses and found out that military members did volunteer work," said Maureen Hanna, Hunley Park Elementary resource teacher. "This program shows kids that there are people they never knew who care about them."

This program matches Airmen with students from Child Development Program (equivalent to pre-school) through the 5th grade. The students are referred by their teachers to the volunteers who are willing to help them. Once they are selected, the students are paired up with Airmen who work together with them one-on-one.

"Before an Airman helped me, I couldn't read well," said Tianie Lazaro, 9 a fourth-grader at the school. "My reading is much better now; I'm looking forward to them coming back this year."

The Airmen establish relationships with the students and provide positive reinforcement and help them build self confidence. Throughout the school year the students say they see their grades improve and look forward to showing their Airman the progress.

The help the Airmen provide to the students is not only for the work they do in class, but it's also to help them prepare for the Palmetto Academic Challenge Test and Measures of Academic Progress Test at the end of the year.

"My reading wasn't very good," said Jessica Graham, 9, a fifth grade student. "Most of the time, I struggled with the think and respond portion of my English class. This is where my teacher reads a question out loud and I have to write the answer. The teacher couldn't spend as much time with me as I needed. I also had a hard time understanding math. The Airman I was paired with was very friendly and took their time to help me. After their help, I was able to bring up the score on my tests, and I could think and respond much better and my math grades came up too."

Hunley Park Elementary says they are looking for more volunteers this year than last year, if Airmen are willing to help.

"The students are really looking forward to the Airmen coming back and helping them this year," said Michael Ard, Hunley Park Elementary principal. "When a child knows that there's somebody who cares about them and how they're doing in school, they tend to want to do better."

He also went on to say, "The relationships the Airmen build with the students mean the most to the students. Sometimes you don't think what you do affects someone, but even the smallest bit of effort makes a big difference."

If any Airman is interested in volunteering to help out the students of Hunley Park Elementary, call Mrs. Hanna at 767-5914.