Who knew lifelines came with page numbers?
An after-school program at H. Allen Hight Elementary School has spent nearly four months with third- through fifth-graders who had fallen behind peers in their reading, offering help in catching up and bolstering their academic hopes for the future.
Take Geeti, for example. The fourth-grader’s native language is Farsi, not English, and she was reading at a second grade level when she began the program. After 56 days of instruction, she not only has caught up, she has soared past many peers. She now reads at a sixth-grade level.
“If I say read one hour, she reads two,” teacher Raenette Earnest said of Geeti, who was beaming this week as she took part in an end-of-year celebration honoring the 17 students in Hight’s Accelerated Reading Extended Day Program.
“I never used to like reading, but when I came to the program, it made me grow and learn my vocabulary and improve a lot of stuff,” Geeti said, adding that her favorite book was “Because of Winn-Dixie,” about a girl’s friendship with a stray dog and the characters she met through it.
Geeti’s success in the Hight program is not unique.
Elizabeth is a native Samoa speaker who could not speak English a year ago. She also spent 56 days in the Hight program, increasing her reading level by 2 years and 7 months. Elizabeth and her mother read together now to continue the momentum.
“It changed my life,” Elizabeth said of the program, which met four times a week after school, until 3:15 p.m.
One 9-year-old student, inadvertently touching upon how reading can affect confidence and self image, said he knows that other kids are playing after school but that he’d rather become a better reader so he “won’t be the dumb one.” His sad comment has a happy ending: His reading skills grew by seven months in only 21 days.
Not every student in the after-school program has attained grade level in reading, but all have improved, Earnest said. Results in some cases are stunning: For one student, 30 days of instruction produced more than a year of reading growth; for another, 56 days sparked more than two years of growth.
Earnest was the program’s teacher, motivator, and head cheerleader. She was assisted by Debra Jones, instructional assistant, and by Clara Allen, librarian. Kids not only were taught reading strategies, they received individual help, and their successes were celebrated as a class.
“She’s funny and she loves me,” Elizabeth said of Earnest.
Earnest said she is “immensely proud” of the after-school class. “This is my most joyful time of the day, when I’m with them, because they’re so eager to learn and they’re so supportive of one another.”
