READING, WRITING AND ROLE MODELS.(Capital Region)

Byline: PATRICK KURP Staff writer

Outside on Fifth Avenue, the gutters ran with slush and rotting leaves, and young men stood on dark stoops in bulky winter coats, watching the storefront filled with light.

Inside the Bridge Coalition Neighborhood Center, some 20 students and their tutors from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute seemed to revel in noise. Children sang and danced, taunted and teased, worked sums aloud and competed for tutorial approval.

A hand-lettered sign on the wall, labeled "Rules continued," began: "No one is stupid."

"I know it looks like chaos," said Lynette Kirkwood, coordinator of the Bridge Coalition's literacy …