Christian Peña and Professor Brad Wilcox, Teacher Education

In the fall of 2008, I founded a service program called Conexiones. This service program seeks to organize and send Brigham Young University students into the homes of local Latino families to encourage literacy by reading with the children and parents. The program provides no curriculum, but relies heavily on the volunteers and participant families developing close friendships and thereby increasing the positive experience related to reading. Over the last year and half, Conexiones has grown from an idea to a pilot semester that involved two families and four volunteers and most recently to a university sponsored service organization with forty-five families and over seventy volunteers. Establishing Conexiones was to be the thrust of my research project, but in conjunction with the program, I wanted to secure quantifiable data that would provide proof of the program’s effectiveness. Developing the methods for collecting this data proved to be very helpful in guiding Conexiones and how it was developed and run. Unfortunately, due to challenges involved in collecting the data, I do not have anything quantifiable to report at this time. However, I feel that through relating information about the growth of the program and how it has progressed, as well as relating the interest and support that the program has generated, I can provide qualitative evidence of its significance.

At first, Conexiones was just an idea. There was no existing service organization that related to it. There was no class assignment that required the creation of such a program. The idea for the program came from a variety of experiences in my life, such as hearing a friend constantly complain about not being able to keep up their Spanish proficiency after their LDS mission, or from the comments of my Mexican uncle about how little Mexicans read in relation to Americans. Though these were not the most academic precursors, they were sufficient to motivate me to find a means for BYU Spanish-speaking returned missionaries to practice speaking with native speakers, and to aid Latino immigrants to develop literacy skills and habits.

With the help of some initial volunteers, I started the program by knocking on doors and inviting Spanish-speaking families to participate. Almost every family that we invited was eager to do so. We talked to our friends and then we visited Spanish classes on campus in order to find volunteers. As the program has continued, we have kept this simple model of knocking on doors to find families and then finding volunteers through personal contacts or through soliciting to oncampus Spanish classes. Through this model, we have now involved over 60 families and over 130 volunteers.

The surveys that I planned to use to evaluate the effectiveness of Conexiones came about through working with Brad Wilcox. Early in the development of the program, I wanted to develop means to verify that my program was making some type of difference. I knew that I needed outside help in order to do this. I was referred to Brad. Upon meeting with him, I was met with excitement, enthusiasm and a big hug. From day one, he has been very helpful. After I explained the program and what I hoped to accomplish, he suggested that I use the Reader’s Self-Perception Scale to measure how our volunteers’ involvement with the participant families affected how the students felt about themselves as readers.

The Reader’s Self-Perception Scale, developed by William A. Henk and Steven A. Melnick in 1995, is a survey that quantifies how elementary school students feel about themselves as readers. It does so by asking students to explain the extent to which certain phrases apply them, such as: “I like to read in front of other students,” or, “My teacher thinks that I read well.” After the questions are answered, a score is calculated. I planned to have volunteers administer a survey to the children during their first visit with the families. At the end of a three-month period, I would have the volunteers administer the same survey, and by comparing the pre and post results, we would determine if the volunteers’ interaction had made any difference in the readers’ attitude. This would also require that we have the volunteers keep track of what they did during their visits and how often they visited. Despite trying to collect data this way for two semesters, we have yet to gather enough to draw any significant conclusions.

Along with developing the program and trying to use surveys to collect data, I have currently been spending a great deal of time on presentations about Conexiones. This fall, I have had the opportunity to present it at the President’s Leadership Council and also to the Library Executive Committee. In collaboration with the Harold B. Lee Library, we made a three-minute informative video with interviews of participants, volunteers, Brad, and me. This we showed at both presentations along with a short speech delivered by me. That so many important figures have expressed interested in Conexiones signifies to me that we are addressing issues that are significant and meaningful.

I have also been able to present Conexiones to the Center for Service and Learning, and it has since been adopted as an officially school sponsored service organization. This is will be a big factor in the continuation of the program after I graduate from BYU in April 2010. The support and resources provided by the Center will allow others in the future to continue on with the work that I have started.

Being a part of Conexiones during my undergraduate years has been the most rewarding experience yet. I have taken many great classes, had wonderful teachers, and read tons of good books. However, the interactions that I have had with volunteers and participants of the program have taught me priceless lessons that could only be learned outside of the classroom.