Sidra's Star Readers was a project developed based on my reflection of the time I spent in Pakistan helping the children and the joy it brought me along with my experience with reading to my little sister. From these experiences I developed the research question of "does reading out loud improve one’s reading ability?” The research stipulates this may be true, but we don’t seem to be spending a lot of time doing this. Hence, Sidra’s Star Readers at Tree House was developed, to give lower performing readers the support and someone to read with them to improve their reading ability. Which my artifacts seems to show made a difference. Sidra’s Star Readers brought me a sense of that cannot be quantified. One joy I experienced was working with CN. CN has been one of the bright spots in this joy brought to me upon the completion of this project. While all of the students have shown outstanding achievements in their reading skills none more than CN. When we first started I inquired them about their reading level in school. Most of the group indicated being on below their grade level but had the desire to reach beyond their grade level. I knew the few kids from the group that needed even more help based off of their indications for current reading skills and we set out a goal for them to improve at least one reading level. Of the group that had this goal, CN showed extraordinary growth through her hard work and dedication supplemented by the activities that we undertook as a whole. This growth made me feel out of this world because seeing CN go above and beyond her goal reinforced my desire to serve. As serves to others may not provide monitory reward but it provided me with a purpose, a purpose that led me to go above and beyond the requirements and impress Ms. Jen and Ms. Joyce to the point of being offered a position to continue working with the program beyond this project. Even though I was offered and would have enjoyed continuing my project, I was unable to take the offer at the given time. However, if this same opportunity were to come up again I would continue my project by making modifications and have lesson plans set up for the kids. I would have lesson plans so that the kids have activities set up for every day which would include, write your own story, vocab charades, and reading and vocabulary work shop. With the kids stories, I would have had a walk through gallery where each kid would see what their peer wrote and how everyone has a different writing style. While I have been the eldest sibling in charge of my brother and sister, I have gained a new perspective and understanding of how to work with other children outside my family. This opportunity has given me the insight into how to interact with young children in a professional manner. Giving me a foundation for my proposed field of study and potential career (psychiatry). Not only have I seen personal growth and a foundation of my academic pursuits, I learned a skill that cannot be taught in any class. Time management. Going along with time management I learned how to plan activities so as to maximize the brief periods of time that we had together. And then, how to keep us on track and task. The biggest challenge I had to overcome for this project was getting comfortable talking to people. While the kids made it really easy given they were as cooperative as they were it was still a challenge to get in front of them and actually talk and teach. Along with the kids, came their parents. While the kids were one hurdle, their parents was a bigger challenge. Mainly because of my anxiety and nervousness around new people, not knowing how they would react to me or accept me. Over the first few weeks, the kids became less of a hurdle and as the kids improved so did my ability to communicate with their parents. We, as a group, all made outstanding improvements… the kids and their reading ability and myself in public speaking.