Lequetta Diggs sat at a table in the corner of Caitlin Reid’s first-grade class and held up a flash card with the word “BRING” in bright green letters.
“Big,” suggested a little boy sitting across from her. Diggs responded patiently: “Look at the card.”
The boy read the word correctly this time, and Diggs nodded and handed him the card.
Soon, two more students wandered over to play the flash card game and began calling out the words they saw.
Diggs, 73, spends four mornings a week as an AARP Experience Corps volunteer at Maxfield Magnet Elementary in St. Paul. The retired nurse is one of 70 Experience Corps members helping to boost students’ reading skills in 11 schools in St. Paul and Minneapolis.
“You get an awful lot of love from the kids,” said Diggs, of St. Paul, who began volunteering with Experience Corps in 2010. “You also get a lot of love and respect from the faculty and staff because you’re there.”