By Robyn Grand, Community Engagement Manager
Words Alive is excited to honor Claire Jakovac as our August Volunteer of the Month!
Claire first joined Words Alive in January 2024 while she was taking a break from working. At the time, Claire was looking for ways to support her community that would leave her feeling like she “did something good at the end of the day.” When she first started attending our Where the Wild Books Are service events at the Words Alive office, Claire helped receive and assemble the shelving units used to organize inventory for our classroom programs. While she enjoyed the activities at the service events, she knew she had other skill sets where she could lend a hand.
Aside from volunteering with Words Alive, Claire also supports the Data Science Alliance in San Diego, helping nonprofit organizations with data-based projects. Claire has brought her interest in data analysis to Words Alive, where she hoped to build on her professional skillset.
“I wanted to apply what I was learning to a real situation, and I was already volunteering with Words Alive. I was like, ‘Do you guys need data? Cause that would be ideal.’”
It wasn’t long before Words Alive’s Learning & Engagement Team took Claire up on her offer to support the evaluation and impact reporting process for our Read Aloud Program.
Claire spoke with pride about helping design questions and analyze data to support impact reporting and program improvement.
“How do you ask a child a question in such that they understand it? Because if you say, ‘Do you like to read?’ sometimes they’re like, ‘I don’t know.’ [Instead, we can ask] ‘Do you like to read a lot? Do you like to read a little? Do you have a favorite book? Is it that you like so many books that you don’t have a favorite book, or is it that you don’t like books?’”
When asked if she thought Words Alive was a valuable place to practice building on professional skills, Claire responded:
“I would say so, 100%. The data project was my first where I was working with real data instead of a pretend data set online, and that was a really significant experience [for me]. I think this was a nice place to gently ease back into more professional atmosphere in a way that would be very wholesome and help get me back into the flow of things.”
One of Claire’s favorite volunteer moments was the process of changing the survey questions from open-ended questions to multiple choice questions. Changing the question format and seeing those changes reflected in the data collection was a really rewarding moment.
Reflecting on major takeaways from the data, Claire noted, “Most of [the kids] - like, 80% - are like, ‘I just like a lot of books.’”
We love to see it! Thank you, Claire, for the creativity and dedication you’ve brought to this project!
Book Q&A
Did you have a favorite book growing up, or is there a book that’s had a big impact on you?
King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry. It’s a horse book. I was a very horse obsessed child. Before this [book], my mom had always read to me. This was the first book where the book was so good, I wouldn’t put it down. I kept saying “another chapter, another chapter, another chapter!” Finally, she reached a point where she said, “maybe if you want to keep reading, you should finish it yourself.” I just said, “okay!” and I picked it up - and that’s the first book I remember reading myself because it was so good, I just had to keep going.
Do you have a specific memory of reading with a caring adult from when you were a child?
I was homeschooled and my mom would read history lessons to me and would make it like a story, which made it a lot more engaging.
What are you currently reading, or do you have a favorite book to recommend to others?
Right now, I’m reading The Secret Lives of Numbers: A History of Math’s Unsung Trailblazers by Kate Kitagawa and Timothy Revell. It’s interesting. It’s a history of numbers, math, and human discoveries about it. It also focuses on people we don’t always hear about in traditional histories because their stories have been pushed to the side. It focuses on their contributions to mathematics and has been super cool to read.