A neighborhood school that's big on reading

Teaching Pre K-8, Feb 2000 by Elliot, Ian

Teaching K-8 visits a school near St Louis and learns what can be done when you're on the road to literacy

Pay a visit to Patricia Tessler's room, as Teaching K-8 did last October, and you may find yourself witnessing a fascinating approach to helping struggling young readers.

Pat, you see, is a Reading Recovery teacher at Delmar-Harvard Center for Investigative Learning, an award-winning K-5 school in University City, Missouri, a community not far from St. Louis.

Pat explained the Reading Recovery approach this way: "The focus is on how to reach first grade children who are showing signs of future reading difficulties. Reading Recovery teachers test these children and instead of interpreting what they don't know, look at what they do know and begin instruction there, a place of comfort where self-confidence and good reading habits become a strong foundation."

Teaching load. Pat, who grew up in University City, has been a reading specialist at Delmar-Harvard for the past 14 years. Her teaching load includes:

four Reading Recovery students - one in the morning and three in the afternoon two first grade classes in their classrooms;

she works with the classroom teachers -- one day in reading, one day in writing a combined second grade reading group that comes to her in the afternoon - Pat confers regularly with the second grade teachers so that she knows what books the children are reading and what's going on in class.

Working with parents. And if that's not enough, she also finds time to work with the parents of her students.

"The parents really want to move ahead," she said. "I assign them a certain number of pages to work on with their children. Each exercise gives them a little bit of the idea behind the actual skills the kids are using. And it's really supposed to be enjoyable. I stressed that when the parents signed up. I said, 'This is not sitting around the kitchen table yelling and screaming. If we have a problem with it, I want you to let me know.' They all have my home phone number.

"There are explanations with the exercises. We try not to make the explanations too lengthy. These are parents who are working and they don't want long theories about education." But written explanations can only go so far; there's always the possibility that they won't capture the spirit of the reading process. To remedy this, Pat spent most of her Christmas vacation in 1998 visiting children's homes so parents could see how she worked with them.

Pat told Teaching K-8 that she recently used a simple - but highly effective - marketing ploy to enlist the parents' support: She offered a free McDonald's coupon (paid for out of her own pocket) to parents who would work with their children at home.

"The parents were waiting outside for their children and every parent came up," she recalled. "As soon as the kids found out they could have a McDonald's coupon, they went outside to tell their mom or dad, 'You've got to go upstairs right now - Mrs. Tessler gives us a McDonald's coupon if we sign this paper saying we're going to read this book at home! I wasn't even ready, but they were all at the door."

Articles of faith. Almost without exception, Reading Recovery teachers pay strict attention to two articles of faith:

Don't get fancy and change the various strategies that make up the Reading Recovery process. Pat says she's tried in a very small way and it just doesn't work.

Go back regularly for refresher sessions. Pat says she spends one afternoon a month attending a Reading Recovery teachers' meeting.

Pat finds it all "wonderful" - even the long hours she spends on the behind-the-scenes work connected with Reading Recovery. "I'm here with other teachers until six-thirty at night," she said. "A second grade teacher and I close this place up on Friday nights.

Just as "wonderful" was a workshop on Reading Recovery she gave for all of the first grade teachers in the district. "It was unbelievable," she told us. "They said, 'How can we get this training? We want to try this. What can we doT But, of course, it's very expensive. I think my training cost the district about $12,000."

Remembered for reading. Any school that has its own Reading Recovery teacher (Pat is the only one in the district) is going to be big on reading, and this includes Delmar-Harvard. Much of the credit for this happy state of affairs goes to Principal Victoria Gonzales-- Rubio. Dr. G-R, as she's known to everyone on the staff, has definite ideas about how she wants future generations to view her. "I think if there's one thing I'd like to be remembered for, it's reading," she told Teaching K-8.

Chances are, she'll be remembered for a lot of other things, too. After all, it's not every elementary school principal who creates a climate of learning that garners such honors as:

Recipient of the Missouri Gold Star School award in 1996

Designated one of America's Best Schools by the U.S. Department of Education

Selected for the Successful Schools Initiative sponsored by the Danforth and Kauffman Foundations