AS DEMAND FOR READING QUEST’S free tutoring services tripled last year, Rayna Dineen faced a problem—several problems, actually. The nonprofit’s wait list expanded, new schools wanted in, and existing districts clamored for extra days. “So the challenge was to hire a lot of new people and train them really well so that we could serve this need,” says Dineen, who serves as director of the Santa Fe–based organization she founded in 2015.
She and her team went straight to work, increasing staff and raising an additional $200,000 from local schools, foundations, city and county grants, and private donations. Today, more than 500 students each week receive one-on-one structured literacy tutoring and social-emotional support, both in school and after school, at the nonprofit’s Santa Fe center.
The students are referred by their teachers at public schools in Taos, Santa Fe, Bernalillo, and West Las Vegas, as well as by Native American Student Services, Turquoise Trail Charter School, Communities in Schools of New Mexico, and the Adelante Program for youths experiencing homelessness.
“Reading is the foundation of everything,” Dineen says. “If you cannot read, you cannot get a driver’s license, you cannot apply for a job, you cannot go to college. Your opportunities are very limited. It’s hard to follow your dream if you cannot read.” While kids struggling to read aren’t always eager to work on it after school, Reading Quest changes that. “Our mentors develop close relationships with the kids, so it’s fun,” Dineen adds. “The kids know they care.”
Reading Quest also runs summer reading camps and offers professional development for tutors, teachers, other reading specialists, parents, and volunteers from other organizations. “None of this would be happening if we didn’t have the most wonderful, kind, compassionate, and highly skilled reading specialists,” she says.
Dineen, who’s worked in education for 40 years, founded Santa Fe School for the Arts & Sciences in 2000. For 13 years, she taught and served as principal of the school, which focuses on experiential learning through long-term projects.
The seeds for Reading Quest were planted as Dineen and her seventh and eighth graders studied how to battle inequality and help make a better world. Her students came up with a clear answer: education.
A TED talk by Kiran Sethi, the founder of Riverside School in Ahmedabad, India, about empowering young people inspired Dineen to apply for a grant that enabled 15 of her students to travel to India to witness the community work being done. “Our reading levels are lower than in some parts of India,” she says. In 2012, they launched the student-led literacy campaign Hooked on Books with citywide reading contests and other initiatives. Reading Quest grew out of that campaign.
Amanda Mendez, a speech language pathologist, is doubly grateful for Reading Quest. Her 15-year-old son, Lorenzo, is dyslexic and started the free tutoring services at age nine. “Not only was he afraid to read in front of people, he was afraid to be in social situations,” Mendez says. “Now he’s meeting people and interacting.” Mendez’s daughter, Sonya, now 16, invented games and other tools to help her brother, inspiring Dineen to bring her on board as a Reading Quest tutor. “Lorenzo built such a family at Reading Quest,” Mendez says. “It’s truly magical what they do.”
