Description:
We are seeking dedicated adults to serve as Literacy Allies, a vital role focused on accelerating foundational
reading skills for our youngest learners. In this position, you will work in our schools with small groups of
kindergarten and first-grade students, delivering purposeful, intentional practice that is strictly aligned with the
University of Florida Literacy Initiative (UFLI) framework. To ensure your success, you will collaborate closely with our District Literacy Coach for ongoing instructional guidance, training, and logistical support. By investing your time and professional skills, you will provide the targeted, high-quality support our youngest learners need to build a lifetime of literacy success.
Weekly Time Slots
The initial pilot program will serve three elementary schools, each with its own unique scheduling windows to
accommodate student needs. Because routines are vital for our classrooms, we ask that all Literacy Allies
review the timeframes at the link below and select the building, the day of the week, and the one-hour time slot
that best fits their professional availability to maintain consistency week after week. You will receive a follow-up
email in early August.
Key Commitment & Requirements
- Professional Training: Complete a mandatory, comprehensive four hours of training, one hour each
week during the month of September. Multiple training days and time options will be provided. These
options will be sent to you in early August. - Weekly Sessions: All Literacy Allies will commit to one hour every other week during the 2026-27
school year working with students inside our schools.- Individuals: Each individual will be paired with others to serve a small group of students and will be expected to commit to one hour every other week (including commute time
- Team of Allies: A team of six Literacy Allies can partner and commit to cover three hours per
week, two twenty-minute sessions with five minutes between sessions.
Each volunteer for this program is considered an “Unsupervised Volunteer” as you will work with students
without a teacher directly present. Due to that, we must complete a background check. The following link will
take you to the site where you can complete the information to have a check done. You will need to sign up for
an account using an email address and password you will create: bit.ly/sfsdvolunteerbc
Training Schedule
To prepare you for success in the classroom, there will be mandatory, comprehensive professional learning for
all Literacy Allies throughout September. While detailed scheduling information will be shared in early August,
our current vision for this training is an interactive, four-week series where allies attend a single one-hour session
each week in September. We plan to maximize this hour by splitting it into three high-impact segments that
allow for questions and answers at the school sites.
Click the Link to Sign Up for the SFSD Community Literacy Allies Program: https://forms.gle/WMzA2LH1vNaX9yej8
