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School Children, Literacy, and Government Proposals
In an international comparison of reading achievement in 32 countries, students from the United States placed second in reading (Elley, 1992). After analyzing three studies which compare the reading achievement of U.S. children today with achievement scores from the past, the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association, in a recent publication, state, "Thus, evidence suggests that students today read better and write better than at any other time in the history of our country" (cited in Routman, 1996, p. 5). But in spite of these positive reports, many citizens remain concerned about the state of literacy among American school children. The most prominent concerned citizen is President Bill Clinton who, in the summer of 1996 while on the campaign trail for re-election, expressed concern about the dismal performance by fourth grade students on the 1994 administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a testing program that has become known as "the nation's report card" (Diegmueller, 1996). On these congressionally mandated tests, 40% of fourth-graders scored below the basic level (Office of Educational Research and Improvement, 1994). In his final radio address of 1996, Clinton highlighted his national literacy campaign he called "America Reads" with a stated clear national goal: Every American child should be able to read on his or her own by the end of third grade. In this address and elsewhere, he calls upon "30,000 reading specialists and volunteer coordinators to mobilize a million volunteer reading tutors all across America." Stating that "we know that individualized tutoring works," he goes on to name several successful tutoring programs (Clinton, 1996, p. 2537-2538).
Reactions to the president's proposal have been mixed. On the positive side, Robert E. Slavin, a creator of the Success for All reading program and a leading researcher at Johns Hopkins University, said that Clinton's plan is "analogous to President Kennedy's pledge to put a man on the moon" (cited in Manzo & Sack, 1997, [p. 1]). He believes that, as Kennedy's mandate excited the nation to attain the unattainable, so Clinton's plan has the potential to help large numbers of students in unprecedented ways. On the America Reads World Wide Web home page, the potential of Clinton's proposal to help struggling readers is emphasized by citing 10 successful tutoring programs, all which have promoted literacy in a variety of settings by enlisting the help of non-professionals (America Reads Challenge, 1996).
Predictably, Clinton's proposal is getting a cool reception among some legislators on Capitol Hill who, citing existing programs both private and federal, claim that it is a duplication of effort. Others, including both legislators and educators, feel that more funds should be directed toward the schools where the foremost mission is to teach children to read (Manzo & Sack, 1997). Edward Fry, emeritus professor of education at Rutgers University, in an open letter to President Clinton (Fry, 1997), lists several concerns that he has with the proposal. The first is with definitions. What does it mean to "be able to read?" This involves setting standards, and standards are an elusive thing when talking about skill in reading. He points out that, when the NAEP (cited above) finds that 40% of the nation's fourth graders read below a basic level, this "basic level" is merely "the subjective opinion of some unnamed group of ‘experts.' It is sort of a ‘Wouldn't it be nice if they could' basic level of achievement" ([p. 2]). Fry also discusses the normal distribution curve and the fact that, even if we substantially raise the reading levels of the lowest group of students, there will still be those who are above and below the norm. There always will be reason for being "alarmed."
Fry's final concern has to do with problems associated with the use of volunteers. It will be hard to find quality people who will commit to a year or two of work for no pay. A tutoring relationship is bound to be beneficial to both the tutor and the child. But Fry suspects that only professional educators, not volunteers, will be able to substantially help the students most in need of remediation.
The concern over the use of volunteers to increase literacy is not Fry's alone. Diane E. DeFord, a professor at Ohio State University who helps to direct Reading Recovery, a successful early intervention reading program for at-risk first-graders, also works with the AmeriCorps volunteer project at the university. If given the choice of where to spend money to bolster literacy, DeFord says she would "put it into teachers. I do not think you can run a program for your greatest at-risk children with volunteer or uncertified teachers" (cited in Diegmueller, 1996, [p. 3]). Similarly, in a letter to the editor of Reading Today, doctoral student Cynthia Smith suggests that tutors be used in other ways to free up teachers so they can work with struggling students (Smith, 1997). In retort to the letter the following month, Keith Topping, Director of the Centre for Paired Learning at the University of Dundee in Scotland, agrees that tutoring does not always help "in every case in real life." But he believes that this is due in part to poor organization by inexperienced tutoring project coordinators. He says, "Large-scale meta-analyses indicated many years ago that in the vast majority of controlled studies, tutored students outperformed control students, that low-ability students tended to make the largest gains, and that training in structured methods improved the effectiveness of tutoring" (Topping, 1997, p. 19).
Work-study coordinators, while happy that the Department of Education announced late in 1996 that it would waive the 25% of student wages that they previously had to pay for those working as reading tutors, are wondering if Clinton's plan is too optimistic in hoping to place 100,000 students in tutoring jobs (Hoff, 1996).

The Summit on America's Future
In April 1997, President Clinton, with the cooperation of all living former presidents of the United States and numerous nationally known leaders and celebrities, including General Colin Powell, held the Summit on America's Future in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The focus of the summit was to "boost volunteering substantially within three years with an emphasis on helping youth" (Roberts & Roberts, 1997, p. 4). Americans were called upon to "give their time to improve the lives of at least two million of the nation's 15 million poor children by the end of the year 2000" (Barnes & Gerson, 1997, p. 7). Many organizations made pledges of service at this gathering, including the North American Division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

The Adventist Commitment
The Adventist pledge was sponsored jointly by the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA, also called Adventist Community Services in the U.S.) in conjunction with YouthNet–the Adventist Youth Services Network–which acts as the volunteerism clearinghouse for the church. At the summit, a commitment was made by Adventist Community Services (ACS), in collaboration with YouthNet, to strive toward these goals (Sahlin, 1997):
1. Activate 100 community-based tutoring projects
2. Mobilize 3,000 volunteers
3. Reach 10,000 at-risk children and youth
According to Dr. Jose Rojas, director of the Adventist Youth Service Network, the Adventist commitment was "given to President Clinton three months before there was any announcement for the Summit in Philadelphia," adding that "we were among the most aggressive of the churches who have stepped forward" (Rojas, 1997, p. 30). The church has been involved in community service efforts since 1934.
In August of 1997, Rojas and Sandra Brown of Adventist Community Services took part in a planning meeting for the Alliance for Youth Project headed by former Joint Chief of Staff Colin Powell. A number of national service organizations met with Powell and representatives from government agencies involved in volunteer efforts in the United States. The Seventh-day Adventist Church was the only denominational organization represented at this 2-day event. Powell expressed deep appreciation to Rojas and the church, encouraging them to "keep up the good work" (North American Division Youth Ministries Department, 1997).
A reading tutoring curriculum titled Making SMILIES: Helping Children Read (Freed et al., 1997) was immediately developed by a number of educators at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan, in response to the commitment. SMILIES is an acronym that suggests the seven original intelligences as proposed by Howard Gardner (1983): spatial, musical, intrapersonal, linguistic, interpersonal, exercise (bodily/kinesthetic), and solving problems (mathematical). Use of the intelligences would be encouraged during the tutoring lessons through a menu of activities classified under each intelligence. Many of the specific techniques in the manual are patterned after those used in other successful reading programs.
The first training session in the effort was held in late August 1997 at ADRA's North American Regional Office in Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C. Twenty-five volunteers from around the country attended these sessions to learn more about the basics of setting up a tutoring and mentoring project in general and the SMILIES curriculum in particular. These original trainees were not only trained to be reading tutors, but they were also given the mandate to become trainers of tutors themselves.

Statement of the Problem
Whether there is a real crisis in literacy instruction in the United States, or whether it is simply "manufactured" as Berliner and Biddle (1985) suggest, does not change the fact that President Clinton has announced a national literacy campaign, "America Reads," to deal with the illiteracy that does exist (Clinton, 1996). A tremendous effort is underway to "mobilize and train a citizen army of one million reading tutors" to deal with this "complicated problem" (Clinton, 1997, [p. 1]). Although there are questions about the scope and magnitude of the effort and especially about where money should be spent, there is a good deal of evidence that literacy tutoring programs can make a difference (Topping, 1997).
The America Reads agenda was part of the focus of the Volunteerism Summit held in Philadelphia in April 1997. Many organizations, corporations, and institutions of higher learning made commitments to help in the tutoring effort (Member's List, 1998), including the North American Division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church (Sahlin, 1997). Believing that they can make a difference, now their focus of these organizations has shifted to questions of how the tutoring they offer should be accomplished, and who will benefit from their efforts.

Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study was to document the training and resulting efforts of the initial trainees in the Seventh-day Adventist North American Division (NAD) Tutoring and Mentoring effort during this first year of implementation. It is a descriptive, qualitative study that utilizes the tools of observation, interviews, video and audio recording, and written correspondence to collect pertinent data. The successes and struggles of the trainees are recorded in the form of individual and composite case studies using qualitative inquiry as the primary research methodology.
Chapter 2, the review of the literature, focuses of the phenomenon of volunteerism, why people volunteer, and the benefits of volunteering. The training of teachers in general, and more specifically the training of volunteer literacy instructors, was also investigated. Finally, several successful literacy tutoring projects were highlighted, and the recommendations of a number of experts in the area of literacy tutoring were compiled to create a framework of critical components of tutoring programs.
Given this background, case study analyses of trainees involved in the initial thrust of the NAD Tutoring and Mentoring effort were conducted to answer the following research questions:
1. How were these volunteers recruited and trained for this project?
2. What was their initial training experience like? What initial concerns did they have about their abilities to fulfill their commitment to tutor children and to train other volunteers?
3. What happened after they left the training session?
4. What adaptations did they make in the implementation of the tutoring program?

Importance of the Study
The initial importance of this study was to provide helpful information to the organizers of the Seventh-day Adventist North American Division Tutoring and Mentoring Project as they begin the first full implementation year of the program in 1998-1999. The NAD initiative is certainly aggressive, and the project coordinators are making every effort to insure its success. It is hoped, this study will make a contribution to the existing literature on the training of volunteer literacy tutors, and the effective organization and administration of local tutoring projects.

Limitations of the Study
This study was limited to the volunteers who were trained at the initial NAD Tutoring and Mentoring training session held in Washington, D.C., on August 27 and 28, 1997. The primary focus of the study was these volunteers and their experiences associated with this tutoring program–their training experience and their subsequent efforts to establish tutoring sites in their respective locales. My experiences as a trainer and support person are documented solely as to how they relate to the trainees. Effects on children who receive tutoring at their sites, including pre-posttest gains, attitudinal changes, teacher attitudes, parent attitudes, etc., are not the focus of this study. Any information that is reported relating to these areas is incidental only, and is included to provide information in order to fully document the experience of the trainees.

Definition of Terms
America Reads: An initiative introduced by President William J. Clinton in late 1996 with the national goal that every third-grader in America should be able to read on his or her own by the end of third grade. As a part of this proposal, Clinton advocated mobilizing 1 million volunteer reading tutors to help work with children.
Alliance for Youth: A national organization initiated at the Philadelphia Summit on Volunteerism in April 1997. The mission of the Alliance, headed by former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell, is to reach 15 million at-risk children and youth through mentoring relationships. The goals of the Alliance are larger than the more specific goals of the Adventist Alliance for Youth Tutoring and Mentoring project, sponsored jointly by YouthNet and ADRA (both defined below).
North American Division (NAD): The organizational unit of the Seventh-day Adventist Church which includes all Adventists and their organizations on the North American continent. In this paper, NAD may stand more specifically for the leadership of the division directly responsible for the Tutoring and Mentoring project.
Unions: Smaller units of the NAD that are made of churches in a specific region. A union, such as the Pacific Union, may be composed of several states. Each union has its own leadership that is responsible to the leadership of the NAD.
Conferences: Smaller units of the Unions, regionally organized. Local churches are organized at the conference level.
SMILIES: The literacy tutoring curriculum written specifically for the Adventist Alliance for Youth Tutoring and Mentoring project.
Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA)/Adventist Community Services (ACS): Traditionally, the humanitarian agency for the Seventh-day Adventist Church. ACS is the U.S. domestic branch of ADRA International. ACS centers are strategically located throughout the U.S. and have supplied disaster relief, food, clothing, health screening services, inner city, and other community action programs to those in need.
YouthNet: The Adventist Youth Services Network, the official volunteer agency of the North American Division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Tutoring: An effort by a more experienced person to impart academic skills or knowledge to a less experienced person. In this study, literacy tutoring is offered by older youth and adults to children in Grade 3 and below.

Organization of the Study

This dissertation has eight chapters, arranged in the following manner:
In chapter 1 I introduce the problem that is examined. It contains a description of President Clinton's America Reads challenge and the response to it. I explain the Tutoring and Mentoring program initiated by the North American Division of the Seventh-day Adventist church in response to Clinton's challenge.
Chapter 2 contains a review of the literature in three main areas: the phenomenon of volunteerism and volunteers, effective training of professional instructors generally and volunteer instructors specifically, and characteristics of successful tutoring programs, especially those staffed by volunteers. I also propose a matrix of critical components of tutoring programs which is used as a framework for analysis.
In chapter 3 I explain the research methodology used in the study. I examine features specific to qualitative studies generally and to this study in particular. An explanation of the study's timetable, data collection techniques, and verification processes is given.
Chapter 4 describes the initial training session attended by the participants. Their written statements about their intentions and concerns are analyzed and summarized.
Chapters 5 and 6 offer case study observations of two participants who were successful in establishing tutoring projects in their home areas. After visiting their tutoring sites and interviewing their volunteers, I describe the components that contributed to their successful implementation.
Chapter 7 contains composite narrative stories of those participants who attended the initial training session, but who were unable, for various reasons, to implement a tutoring project during the 1997-1998 school year. In these composite stories, I summarize the reasons they gave for the frustrations they experienced in establishing tutoring programs.
In chapter 8 I provide a summary of the study by responding to the original research questions. I discuss other findings, and offer suggestions, based on my research, to the organizers of the North American Division Tutoring and Mentoring project specifically, and to those who are considering implementation of tutoring projects generally. I close the study by making recommendations for further research.