English professor Jess Roberts is pretty clear about the qualities which make a good volunteer for Albion’s annual Big Read program.

“They go all-in. They express their joy openly,” Roberts said. “They are goofy and honest. They take risks. They care openly about one another and the book.”

The above would be an unusual job description for some community reading programs. But Albion’s Big Read is far from usual. Since its beginning as a grant-writing exercise for Roberts’ Fall 2014 professional writing class, Albion’s Big Read has become a community fixture during October, attracting nearly 1,000 participants annually to multiple book discussions and events ranging from a kickoff parade to film screenings, craft nights, and visits from nationally renowned authors.

Unlike many reading programs, Albion’s Big Read is not led by a cadre of adult bibliophiles. Instead, Roberts and the volunteers spend months with the 8th, 9th, and 10th-grade Albion young people who lead the book discussions. That staff includes wingman Nels Christensen, the Big Read assistant director, and the volunteers. Together, they mess around with what it looks and feels like to talk about a book, and the volunteers create what Roberts calls “a context of joy.”

Roberts teaches them many of the literary and textual analysis tools used by her college students, while the volunteers assist with developing team-building, group leadership, and problem-solving development skills.

Creating a college, volunteer pipeline

Of course, the Big Read is focused on each year’s book, student-leader training, and the community members who participate, but there are unique-and-enriching experiences for volunteers as well.

“The Big Read put me on Albion College’s campus,” said Akaiia Ridley ’22, one of the Big Read’s first student leaders, and one of 18 who eventually enrolled at Albion.

As a 10th-grade student leader, Ridley wasn’t yet considering her future college but when she did, that Albion introduction was powerful. “The Big Read made me more comfortable with the academic environment of college and knowing that I would have professors like Jess and Nels made me more eager to attend Albion,” Ridley said. She eventually served as a college volunteer and just stepped down as the Big Read’s assistant director.

Ridley credits her experience with Big Read with showing her “the importance of sharing/preserving the stories of communities like Albion.” She said her honors thesis focused on oral histories from Albion’s Black alumni and was inspired by this insight. This spring, Ridley earned a master’s degree in historic preservation from Eastern Michigan University.

Unlike Ridley, Richard Annorat ’20 had never heard of the Big Read when Roberts convinced him that the volunteering opportunity was worth his time. “What really got me was the intentionality and the structure,” he said. “Jess and Nels were mindful of every student leader, valuing every individual. This was different from how I’d been trained as a camp counselor, where the focus was onthe group.”

After three years with the Big Read, Annorat graduated with a degree in English language arts education and spent a year at Harrington Elementary. Now beginning his third year as Earlham College’s (Indiana) track and field coach, Annorat reflected on how the Big Read and Roberts are part of his professional philosophy.

“Jess is all about intentionality and an environment that’s safe and positive so students can put in their best effort,” he said. “Students want to put in effort because they see themselves getting better. It’s leading with love. It’s a cliché but that’s what I want to do as well.”

LaRohnda Richardson ’21 (who served as a Big Read volunteer) has a full-time job but also makes time to work with youth. “Albion helped me realize that teaching wasn’t for me, but the Big Read showed me that I wanted to help kids discover their love of something,” said Richardson, an accounting administrator who moonlights as assistant director of Bloomfield Hills (Michigan) High School’s theater program. “The Big Read helps kids discover their love of reading, of books, of the community. In theater, we’re working with visual forms of literature. It’s more physical, but I still get the rush I got working with the Big Read.”

What program volunteers gain is different for each one, but Roberts is clear on the unifying opportunities that come from the experience. “We create relationships with the [volunteers] that are rooted in authentic collaboration. The volunteers also gain the opportunity to create an educational space self-consciously and deliberately, for someone else, and this makes them become increasingly aware of their power to do so,” Roberts said. “Then they take that awareness, and the set of skills they have developed, into other settings.”

“We tell the [volunteers] from the very beginning, ‘It’s not about you. It’s about the leaders.’” Roberts explained. “But there is no Big Read without our volunteers. Their willingness to invest in our leaders, to express their joy, to be goofy and honest and authentic is what makes it possible.”