New Mexico’s Summer Reading Program is offered every year by the state’s Public Education Department, and this summer it will have a new site in Albuquerque: The African American Performing Arts Center and Exhibit Hall on the State Fairgrounds.
“We’ll be using (our classroom) to host 40 students,” said Dannelle Kervin, the director of the New Mexico Martin Luther King, Jr. Commission, which has its offices in the complex. The state Office of African American Affairs is there as well.
The program serves students from incoming kindergartners to outgoing eighth graders with focused reading instruction in small groups of four students each. Students attend four hours of instruction daily for four weeks.
Kervin reached out to Martica Davis-Reynolds, who administers the program, about hosting one of this summer’s cohorts in the commission’s classroom.
“Our hurdle at the time was technology,” Kervin said. “Students need access to laptops in order to do the online testing.”
However, Kervin was able to find a donor to provide the laptops, thus sealing the deal.
The program is still hiring instructors for the summer. Reading instructors must be available to take the trainings that begin in late March. Details about becoming an instructor or enrolling a student in the Summer Reading Program can be found at literacy.nm.gov.
