After 30 years of teaching in and around Tuscaloosa, Jeanne Burkhalter considers her involvement in Book Buddies to be the most important work of her career.

Burkhalter has been the head of Book Buddies at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School for two years. The program focuses on reaching students who struggle with reading by supplying one-on-one mentorship from volunteers through instruction she designed herself.

"We’re changing the trajectory of a child’s life," said Burkhalter, who was part of the driving force in creating the concept for Tuscaloosa Magnet Elementary School and led it as principal from its founding in 2009 to her retirement from Tuscaloosa City Schools in 2015. "This feels more like a calling."

Book Buddies aims to help elementary students read at their grade level by third grade, which is a pivotal time in a child's development. Some research has found that children are less likely to graduate high school if they are not able to reach reading proficiency by third grade.

Every Tuesday and Thursday, Burkhalter and other volunteers from across the city come to MLK to mentor the 40 or so children between kindergarten and second grade by helping them sharpen their reading skills. Each child in the program is chosen based on evaluations from teachers based on their own literacy needs.

In its first year, Burkhalter and her volunteers took time building the program. During the first semester, they worked with around 15 second-graders. The next semester, they added first-graders. This year, the team has added kindergarteners to the ranks, taking on three grades at once.

"We were worried about working with kindergartners because we thought they might be tired at the end of the day, but the research shows that the younger you can reach children the quicker they can change," she said.

Teachers have already seen improvements in their own classrooms based on what has been happening in Book Buddies. Khalia Burton, a first-grade teacher at MLK, said the program has inspired some of her students to be more confident.

"They are more my leaders now because they are more confident in what they are doing right now," Burton said. "Once they leave, they just go up and up from here."

Burton said that with her students, she has seen improvement as great as improving 10-20 more words per minute than before. According to Burkhalter, reading at grade level consists of reading at around 111 words per minute.

"All of their children were reading by grade level at the end of the year," Burkhalter said. "Some didn’t necessarily test out, but they could read books at their grade level, which they couldn’t do before."

MLK Elementary was chosen as the pilot location for the program a year ago based on suggestions from TCS administrators about the literacy needs in that school. Like many schools across Alabama, MLK Elementary is working to improve its literacy rates by getting children to read at or above grade level by the time they reach third grade.

According to data from the ACT Aspire test given during the 2016-17 school year, nearly 60 percent of third-grade students at MLK were considered "in need of support" in reading while at least 10.5 percent were considered ready. Across TCS, at least 40.5 percent of third-graders were in need of support in reading while nearly 18 percent were considered ready.

Mike Daria, superintendent of Tuscaloosa City Schools, said the school system is using the program and other initiatives to close the reading gap and get children reading by grade level as early as they can.

"We want to do this in a meaningful way that complements the work that teachers are doing in the classroom every day," Daria said.

Reading at or above grade level by third grade has been identified as a key timeframe by education researchers in order to establish future academic success. According to a study published by the Annie E. Casey Foundation in 2012, students who cannot read at grade level by third grade are four times more likely to not graduate from high school.

"We learn to read until third grade and then we read to learn after third grade. If they don’t know how to read by then, they are going to struggle," Burkhalter said.

Jayln O’Neal, a student at Stillman College, is one the 80 volunteers attached to the program, many of whom come from the Honors College at the University of Alabama, Stillman and residents from the community. On Thursday, O’Neal was helping 5-year-old Kylan France as he was trying to sound out the word "my," written on a flashcard. After recognizing his confusion after sounding out different parts of the word but not in its entirety, O’Neal tried another approach.

"If I was to take your shirt, you would say this is…"

"My shirt," Kylan said.

"So this is…" O’Neal asked.

"My," Kylan said.

"Very good," O’Neal said.

For O’Neal, she remembers growing up and seeing kids who had questions and were insecure about reading, but were too afraid to ask for help.

"We were scared to ask because it wasn’t offered," she said. "Here, they are young, so they know it’s OK to not understand and its OK to ask questions."

For Kim Turner, chief executive officer of Boys and Girls Clubs of West Alabama who has volunteered with the program since January, seeing children get help from someone helping them directly has been a powerful thing.

"Having one-on-one really allows us to identify the needs of each child and that child learns faster because their individual needs are met and they can go back in the classroom and not hide," Turner said.

Since the program started, there has been community involvement to help see it through. In July, the Rotary Club of Tuscaloosa gave MLK Elementary $100,000 to be used for the Book Buddies program at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary and the library at the school’s new building set to be completed in 2020.

"This is something those children will take with them for the rest of their life: They are learning to read," Rotary President Sammy Watson told The Tuscaloosa News in July. "We think that’s a very significant gift to the community."

Both Burkhalter and Daria have expressed interest in seeing Book Buddies expand to other schools. However, both said it needs to be done the right way. For Burkhalter, it’s about not providing a one-size-fits all approach, but finding what each school’s needs are.

"Wherever it goes, it has to be based on the individual child," she said.

For Daria, it’s about seeing that the program continues to grow to include more volunteers, more of a budget and more planning.

"This won’t be an overnight change," he said. "It is about growing readers, on by one."

Reach Drew Taylor at drew.taylor@tuscaloosanews.com or 205-722-0204.