April 2021 Newsletter

Be Apart of World Book Day

From the Director’s Corner

Dear Friends,

April = Spring, beautiful flowers and strawberries!

This month World Book Day takes place on April 23. World Book Day changes lives through a love of books and shared reading. Its mission is to promote reading for pleasure, offering every child and young person the opportunity to have a book of their own. WBD has just created a monthly book club— to learn more, visit www.worldbookclub.com.

It has been a busy time for us! We currently have 26 students paired with tutors. We had 22 students paired with tutors on March 17, 2020, when we experienced the COVID Shut-Down—so we’ve made great progress.

We are now providing tutoring in reading through Grade 6 Reading Level. The new curriculum is comprehensive and exciting! The books are about 20 pages long and contain many beautiful illustrations.

Stotler – Hayes Group LLC contacted us to donate items to the organization. We are very grateful to them.

I’m fully vaccinated and excited about the number of people in our organization getting the vaccine shot. We want everyone to be safe and healthy!

Our students and their parents are continuing to express their gratitude for the work our tutors do. Students who never liked reading or speaking are reading for pleasure and getting up to read in front of audiences! I just cannot express how much that means to me and primarily for our students.

Please wear your mask, stay healthy and safe. Enjoy the wonderful weather.

Dodi Hodges, Ph.D.
Executive Director

How You Can Support PLC

Individual membership: $25/year (Pays for materials for one student)
Business membership: $50/year (Pays for materials for two students)

Your business card will be featured in the newsletter and on our website Donate through palmettoliteracycouncil.org

Volunteer News

Tutor Volunteers

There are 36 active volunteers sharing their time and talent with PLC:

• 18 Active Tutors (2 are tutoring 2 students)
• 2 Volunteers who need a student
• 4 Volunteers waiting for a student pairing

Administrative Volunteers

• 1 Volunteer Recruiting Adult Students
• 2 Volunteers helping with Grant-Writing
• 2 Volunteers helping with LACES (database to track students, tutors, and volunteers)
• 5 Volunteers on the Board of Directors
• 1 Volunteer on BOD and Executive Director
• 1 CCU Student Intern/Volunteer

We can use volunteers in the office, as there are plenty of books to be put together. If you have some time to help out with putting together books, contact Dodi.

Libraries

Chapin Library is open and you can reserve a room. They take your temperature and name as you walk in.

Horry County Libraries are available in 1-hour increments. You must wear a mask, clean your hands, and wipe tables to help out. No rooms are available to reserve.

Zoom Social

Hey Volunteers! I hear that you are wanting to get to know each other. Here’s your chance! We only had a few show up for the last one…maybe we can do this face-to-face one day. For now, we’ll have the Zoom Social Meeting on Thursday, April 22, 2021, at 7:30 pm. Have on hand your dinner and/or a glass of ???.

Contact [email protected] and let me know you are interested in attending the Zoom Social in April. I’ll send you the Zoom link.

Volunteer Liaisons

We have enough students at a couple of our libraries that we will need to look for Volunteer Liaisons for Socastee/Surfside Area and Conway. We may have someone for the Socastee area.

What is a Volunteer Liaison? This is someone who will check in with the students (parents), volunteers every couple of weeks to make sure all is good or provide Dodi with information about particular needs in that area. The Volunteer Liaisons will also administer the short progress assessments for the students in that library region. They will check in with the librarians to make sure we are doing our part and how we can help them. Also, make sure there are rack cards or flyers for the libraries.

Orientation & Training

Carla Taylor, our Training Coordinator, will conduct our next Volunteer Orientation and Training on April 27, 2021, at 6:00 PM and May 27, 2021, at 6:00 PM online through the Zoom application.

Meet a Parent – Stephanie Milz

According to Stephanie, Addie was struggling to learn the basic principles of reading in her large kindergarten class at Burgess Elementary.

“She needed more one-on-one learning,” her mother related.

Ultimately, Stephanie decided to home school her daughter. Addie attends Pathways for Scholars Home Coop once a week, and Stephanie then implements lessons and assignments. The tutoring she receives in reading through PLC complements the work Addie does at home.

Twice a week on Monday and Wednesday, Addie meets at the Inlet Square Mall with her tutor Bonnie Kelley.

“I have been so impressed with Bonnie,” Stephanie said.

“She has encouraged Addie and has helped her with her confidence. Addie now enjoys reading on her own.”

Non-fiction is Addie’s genre of choice; she particularly enjoys reading about snakes. She likes fiction too and is currently reading Ramona Quimby Age 8 by Beverly Cleary. Addie also enjoys reading Highlights Magazine.

Stephanie was pleasantly surprised to see that Addie was even using the reading skills she is learning to her math problems and was able to apply strategies for “what to do when you don’t understand a word.”

Stephanie noted that Bonnie wanted to make sure Addie had a mask that would fit well for their tutoring sessions, so she bought a few to try out. This made tutoring more comfortable.

Stephanie said: “She’s like our adopted grandmother. She even sent Addie a postcard from DisneyWorld.”

Reading has become something that Addie enjoys so much that she loves reading to her baby brother. One of her favorites is The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.

“Bonnie is the most wonderful person. “I’m so thankful she has been willing to tutor in spite of Covid,” Stephanie said.

Their sessions are progressing so well that Stephanie believes Addie will be reading at grade level when school begins in the fall.

“It’s so nice to not feel alone in Addie’s struggles,” Stephanie said.

“I feel like a whole community is cheering her on.”

Read, Share, Repeat by Patricia F. D’Ascoli

Picture this: you are curled up in your favorite chair reading a book. Suddenly you happen upon a passage that strikes a chord—maybe you laugh, maybe you cry, maybe you let out a great big sigh. Whatever it is, you react. You have connected to the words on the page. But there is no one to share this with. You are all alone in your book world. You finish the book and think, “Now what?”

You don’t have to be alone in your book world. If you want to talk about books with other bibliophiles, then you might want to join a book club. Book clubs provide an opportunity for lively discussions. You will learn how others felt about the book. Did they find the book as engaging as you did? What did they notice about the characters or the narrative that you didn’t see? What can you learn from them about ways of reading?

Since moving to Myrtle Beach last year, I have joined two book clubs. For now, they meet virtually because of Covid but hope to return to in-person meetings soon.

Myrtle Beach Book Club can be found through www.meetup.com/myrtle-beach-book-club/. The group meets via Zoom on the third Wednesday of the month from 6:30 to 8:30. May’s book is Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly. The monthly book selection is chosen by the member who has volunteered to lead the discussion for that particular month. The organizer—Vicki Baty—usually schedules the Meetups about 2-3 months in advance. ACTIVE participation is a requirement for membership.

Chapin Chapters is the Chapin Memorial Library’s Book Club. The group meets via Zoom on the third Tuesday of the month at 11:00. You can pick up a print copy of the book at the library or download the ebook from the library’s streaming service, Hoopla. For more information, please contact Carolyn Savage at [email protected] or call 843-918-1275.

The Logophile* by Preston McKeever-Floyd

“Words are seeds that do more than blow around. They land in our hearts and not the ground. Be careful what you plant and careful what you say. You might have to eat what you planted one day.” -Unknown”

As I sit and listen to the spring sounds, March wind whistling through the trees, bees buzzing and birds chirping, the word onomatopoeias came to mind. This term entered the English language via late Latin during the late 16th century; however, it is of Greek origin: onoma/ onomat = name + poiein/poios = making, yielding the Greek onomatopolia (word- making) which morphed into the Latin ono- matopoeia.

It would be correct to say that onomatopoeia is a linguistic contrivance or device more than a term, onomatopoetic words are the actual sounds of what they are describing, for in- stance whistling, buzzing, and chirping. Happy Spring!

(This column is dubbed logophile. This term comes from the Greek logos = word or speech and philos = lover of, thus logophile, a lover of words.)

Virtual Author Discussion Via Zoom

April 24, 2021 10:00 to 12:00 Featuring: Susan Beckham Zurenda and Victoria Baty

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Susan Beckham Zurenda taught literature, composition, and creative writing to thousands of AP high school and college students for 33 years, before turning her attention to putting a novel in her heart on paper, the genesis of which was a short story that won the South Carolina Fiction prize some years ago. Her debut novel, Bells for Eli, was selected as a Foreword Indie Book Award finalist (winner to be chosen in June 2021), a Winter 2020 Okra Pick by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, finalist in American Book Fest Best Book Awards, 2020 Notable Indie in Shelf Unbound, and nominated for a 2021 Pushcart Prize. Susan has won a number of regional short fiction awards such as the South Carolina Fiction Prize (twice), the Porter Fleming Competition, The Southern Writers Symposium Emerging Writers Fiction Contest, The Hub City Hardegree Contest in Fiction, Alabama Conclave First Novel Chapter Contest, and The Jubilee Writing Competition.

Visit www.susanzurenda.com to learn more about Susan.

Victoria Baty, the co-owner of Bookends Used Book Store in North Myrtle Beach, SC, majored in English at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland. After 30 plus years in Human Resources Management, Vicki left that career to become the majority owner of Bookends in 2014. A lifelong reader and learner, the change was a dream come true. As a reader of a wide variety of books, Vicki has been able to share this breadth of knowledge with her customers. Prior to COVID- 19, Vicki hosted numerous author events with local and national authors at the store. In her spare time, Vicki writes a book blog www.beachwalkbooktalks.com, attends author Zoom events, coordinates two book clubs, and appears monthly for Book Chats with Scott Richards on WEZV 105.9. Vicki lives in Little River, SC with her husband David and her bookish dog, Boh.

Support Palmetto Literacy Council by attending this lively discussion!

This event is free, but donations are requested.

Your donation will help raise funds to pay for supplies for our students. Please send donations through our website www.palmettoliteracy.org/donations.

Upon registration, you will receive a link for this Zoom (online) presentation

REGISTRATION LINK:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_p-k6WUf1REalAfZ5M8X2Tg

Want to learn more?

Check out our math, reading and writing strategies in our newsletter.

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MISSION STATEMENT

To improve the literacy of youth and adults in our community by teaching/tutoring basic literacy skills for those who struggle with reading, writing and/or math.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

CHAIR: Dodi Hodges: [email protected]
VICE CHAIR: Shawna Roessler [email protected]
TREASURER: Maria Denney [email protected]
SECRETARY: Preston McKever-Floyd [email protected]

MEMBERS AT LARGE:

FUNDRAISING CO-CHAIRS: Patricia D’Ascoli [email protected], Stephanie Southworth [email protected]
TRAINING COORDINATOR: Carla Taylor [email protected]

MAILING ADDRESS: 1229 38TH Avenue North, #130 Myrtle Beach, SC 29577
PHYSICAL ADDRESS: 1010 5th Avenue North Ext., Suite 101I Surfside Beach, SC 29575

FOR INFORMATION OR QUESTIONS:

OFFICE PHONE: 843-945-9278
OFFICE EMAIL: [email protected]
WEBSITE: www.palmettoliteracy.org