A Tarboro church’s summer reading camp brings in the whole town
In a classroom at Calvary Episcopal Church in Tarboro, the wolf was explaining himself. He only wanted a cup of sugar for his granny’s cake. Then came the huffing and the puffing and an achoo loud enough to bring a house down.
Eight rising second graders were acting out “The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!” Thursday night they would do it properly, for their families.
Down the hall, the other room sat on the floor singing Shari Sloane’s “Vowel Bat,” which sets A-E-I-O-U to the familiar 1966 Batman theme, arms and mouths working through the five short vowel sounds.
Fourteen children, two classrooms, four weeks. Calvary’s first summer doing this.
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The church has been in Tarboro since 1833, wrapped in a churchyard arboretum of trees from around the world. The children came from Martin Millennium Academy, Stocks Elementary, and Princeville Elementary. Some were reading in English for the first time, after a school year in Martin Millennium’s Spanish immersion program.
The camp was a Summer Literacy Initiative (SLI) site, supported by the NC Rural Center, The Duke Endowment, Barnhill Family Foundation, and the Impact Center at UNC’s Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute.
“Having the kids here and seeing them learn and grow has been really great,” said Cora Wooten, the site director and a Martin Millennium teacher of 14 years. “This isn’t just instruction. You are learning, but it can be fun.”
Mornings were for phonics followed by reading centers with two teachers to a room and volunteers working with children one-on-one.
“I get to see every single child in the classroom every day,” said Laken Shipp, who teaches the rising second graders. In her classroom during the school year, one-on-one direct instruction does not always happen.
A sixth-year teacher in the district and LETRS-certified, Shipp drove in from Halifax County. She heard about the camp from a digital literacy coach at Carver Elementary who goes to church with Wooten.
In the afternoons, Tarboro showed up.
Two Robertson Scholars, Duke University rising sophomores placed in town, built the enrichment activities with the camp’s coordinator. Their first week they sat in Edgecombe County classrooms, learning what actual teaching looks like in rural eastern North Carolina, before planning anything.
One week the children made pizza. Another week, the sheriff’s department got peppered about whether the deputy had a drone and motorcycle. He said he did, and when the children asked if he could bring them back the next day, he did. The K-9 came next.
For entrepreneurs week, the kids were asked to name a problem in Tarboro. They named mosquitoes.
They made three products: bracelets soaked in essential oil, a fan, and a thing they called a skeeter shaker — a plate with beads inside to rattle the bugs off. The community came in with fake money to buy the products, and the children ran the sale and worked the register.
Another afternoon the children walked to the post office to mail letters to family, then to the coffee house for ice cream, then to Roberson & Dupree for shoes.
Read more about the Summer Literacy Initiative
Thursday nights brought dinner and a short lesson for families on reading at home. Attendance was close to 100% and included grandparents and siblings.
At least three other congregations rotated the cooking: First Baptist, St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Church, and Pinetops Methodist.
Calvary’s 300 parishioners ran a supply drive, and every child took home three to five books a week to keep.
“I always feel better after Thursday night,” Wooten said. “It leaves us feeling like, wow, this is really making such a big impact.”
Edgecombe County Public Schools was in it from the start, getting the children there every morning, feeding the children breakfast and lunch through their summer feeding program, loaning a whole cart of Chromebooks, and backing the camp’s curriculum. The superintendent, Dr. Andy Bryan, had been “extremely supportive,” Wooten said.
Wooten already knew of one child reading on grade level, three weeks in.
“I would love to do it again,” she said.
Calvary’s pastor, Rev. Stephen Mazingo, has been at Calvary for three years. He had been preparing for the summer reading camp since April of the year before. He researched it himself, took it to the vestry for buy-in, and went to parishioners he knew would be interested.
The design team grew from there. Every Sunday through the summer, he told the congregation how it was going. Volunteers turned up most mornings to read with the kids.
“A lot of those people are from our congregation,” Mazingo said, “but not all.”
On the last day of camp, the group visited It’s A Zoo Life in Macclesfield. Then that night on stage with families and friends in the seats, Shipp’s eight students huffed and puffed and blew the house down.
To learn more about the summer literacy camp at Calvary Episcopal Church, to volunteer, or to support next summer’s program, contact the church at 411 E. Church St., Tarboro, N.C., 252-823-8192, or calvarytarboro@gmail.com.
Editor’s note: The Duke Endowment supports the work of EdNC.