RIVER FALLS — Teaching children key skills at an early age can be one of the most valuable achievements for anyone, and the opportunity is present in River Falls.

AmeriCorps, who leads the Wisconsin Reading Corps, runs reading tutoring in River Falls elementary schools.

The district is looking for people interested in tutoring, and as Rocky Branch tutor Dave Schnedler put it, anyone can do it if they put their mind to it. Schnedler did not have experience in education before starting as a tutor.

“It’s not the age or what you did in your past,” Schnedler said. “I think anybody that can read and cares about kids can be a good tutor.”

Schnedler said helping the students improve their reading skills is important, but building connections with the students can be just as important.

“Figuring out what I can do to make that child feel comfortable with me,” Schnedler said.

Early elementary school can be the most crucial time for students to hone in their reading abilities, as students who fall behind in their reading early often stay behind for the remainder of their schooling. Reading is a developmental process that involves lots of small pieces coming together, which makes tutoring valuable, as it can help find the missing skills and target them in the teachings.

“Teaching reading, it’s like little bundles of grapes,” internal coach Heidi Usgaard said. “You have all these little pockets in there, and you have to do everything you can to fill all those pockets in.”

For Schnedler, one of the goals is trying to get the students to read after school hours. Students are becoming increasingly busy outside of school, and finding a love for reading that causes students to want to read after school can make a major difference in how they develop.

Usgaard said tutors are not thrown into things without being comfortable in what they are doing, as they go through training, have lessons laid out for them and have a process. The tutors instead need to focus on bringing the right attitude and determination to the table.

“It’s coming and having a good attitude and bringing energy to work with children,” Usgaard said. “It’s something that you can do.”

Schnedler said the tutors are well prepared to do what they need to, and as long as they are willing to put in their effort, there is a process to follow.

“I thought I would come in here and just read a book to a kid and then another kid would come in and I would read another book,” Schnedler said. “But it’s highly organized. We follow a set plan.”

Rocky Branch Principal Ashley Bingenheimer said the tutoring has more of an impact than simply improving reading skills, as students find staff members in the building who they can trust.

“It builds confidence when kids are able to work at their level with a trusted adult and then transfer that learning back to the classroom in a broader setting,” Bingenheimer said.

For some, this is something they never expected to be doing, but they found a home.

“I never thought that I would be doing a teaching job,” tutor Savannah Williams said. “Once I got over the initial nervous hurdle… it was really fun getting to interact with all the different types of kids and just watch them improve.”

Williams encouraged anyone interested to give it a try to see if it is something they would want to do for a long period of time.