Chuckey Elementary School students and their Tusculum College reading tutors recently celebrated a year's accomplishments through the Wonder of Words program. (Photo courtesy of Chuckey Elementary School)

A year of improving reading skills for students at Chuckey Elementary School through the Wonder of Words (W.O.W.) program was recently celebrated by the students and their tutors from Tusculum College.

Six Tusculum students, including five Service Leader Scholars, have been traveling to Chuckey School throughout this school year with Sara Alenduff, coordinator of the W.O.W. program, to work with 12 students in need of extra assistance with reading.

Typically, the Wonder of Words program, one of the programs of Tusculum Arts Outreach, matches able volunteers with kindergarten through third grade students who have been identified as needing additional assistance with words and reading. Each W.O.W. volunteer works to build a year long, one-on-one relationship with a child by devoting 30 minutes each week to share the joys of reading and thus enhance the student's reading skills.

However, the program was expanded at Chuckey to include older children.

During the last visit of the Tusculum students for the school year to Chuckey, the program's participants received certificates and were treated with a special cake for the occasion.

Alenduff said the Chuckey program would not have been possible without the cooperation and assistance of Dr. Dianne Casteel, assistant principal, and Brenda Grogan, a guidance counselor, at Chuckey, as well as Robin Fife, Joyce Doughty and Michelle Watts of Tusculum's Service-Learning Center. Alenduff also received a grant from the Dollar General Company to help fund the program at Chuckey.

Other Tusculum Service Leader Scholars participated in the W.O.W. program during this school year at Mosheim and Doak elementary schools and at the Backyard Learning Centers in the Greeneville School System.

This month's activities are among the last that Alenduff will be undertaking as W.O.W. coordinator. After five years working in the Tusculum Arts Outreach program, Alenduff is moving to Florida with her family as the result of her husband's promotion to a position at a Parker-Hannifin manufacturing facility there.