Durham employees volunteer for student reading program

BRENHAM, Texas — Two Durham School Services employees at the contractor’s terminal here are volunteering their time as mentors in a local school district’s reading intervention program.

Every Tuesday, Cheryl Tiemann, general manager at the Durham branch, heads to Brenham Independent School District’s Alton Elementary School to read with students as part of the district’s HOSTS reading intervention program. Eddy Minze, safety training supervisor at Durham, does the same on Thursdays.

HOSTS invites caring community volunteers to spend time each week with students who are having difficulty reading and to encourage them to become better readers. The program pairs reading mentors with children on a one-to-one basis, and its motto is “To Succeed You Must Read.”

Alton Elementary serves students in pre-kindergarten through the fourth grade. Tiemann and Minze work with first-graders.

“Sometimes we read to the kids, and sometimes they read to us,” Tiemann said. “It’s very rewarding to know you are making a difference in their lives.”

 “It’s a great bunch of people,” Minze said of the HOSTS volunteers. “Everyone is really dedicated to helping the kids.”

Fabian Swartz, HOSTS teacher at Alton Elementary, thanked Durham School Services for its support of the program at the school. He said that the community volunteers contribute to having a successful program and that the students “are going to be helped in reading because of these volunteers’ dedication to our school.”