Grant money helps improve literacy in some classrooms
Teacher provides books for students on reservation
There’s no public library on the Navajo Reservation, and many students who live there don’t have access to online resources. So second-grade teacher Helen First from Chinle Unified School District No. 24 made it her mission to make books available for students.
And she didn’t just want to supply her own classroom.
“Instead of using it for my classroom, I wanted to share with the other six classrooms,” First said. “There were over 150 students I shared the money with.”
She was talking about the $5,000 she received through the Wishes for Teachers program last year.
With the money, First purchased books, backpacks and trinkets — bookmarks, pencils and erasers — for firstand second-grade classrooms in her school. There are now small libraries that allow students to check out and take home books and swap them out when they’re finished. When they take out a new book, they can choose something from the “treasure box.”
She said she wanted to purchase physical books instead of online books because “it helps them read more fluently.”
“It was just easier to get students to read for enjoyment (with physical books),” First said. “They can take the books and read to their little brothers or sisters, parents, whoever they can read to at home.”
First used her grant to benefit both first- and second-grade classrooms. The result?
“This year, we have a lot of kids that came in already reading. When they came into my (second-grade) class, they were reading,” she said. “We still have a lot of books that we continue to use and they’re loving those books because it’s both fiction and non-fiction. You can see how they’re excited to read.”
First said she followed in her mother’s footsteps and originally became a teacher because she wanted to make a difference. When her students start reading, First said, she can see the difference she’s making.
“It’s awesome to see them when they ... to see that light bulb in them. They read sentences, then read a book, it makes a difference.”
Special-education teacher Leonora
Baltazar also had hopes to improve literacy not only in her classroom, but also in the other special-education classrooms at Longview Elementary.
“We teachers have a lot of dreams for our kids,” she said. “We want to educate them with all the resources we can, so this (grant) really helped make this happen.”
Baltazar teaches in a self-contained special-education classroom and said she often defers to general-education classroom materials that aren’t as helpful for her students. With her grant money, she was able to purchase complete sets of a program called SPIRE — specialized program individualizing reading excellence — for grades K-8.
“SPIRE is a research-based reading intervention program for the lowest performing students,” Baltazar said. “It’s really intensive. The lessons are explicit covering all the reading skills that all the students would need. I thought that this class, because it’s research based, would help us all since we don’t have resources for our students.”
Baltazar said SPIRE has all the materials necessary to help students with skills like comprehension, vocabulary, spelling and decoding. The sets also include items like magnetic letters or large charts that students can manipulate to help them read better.
Baltazar said the materials are expensive and when she heard about the chance to receive $5,000 through Wishes for Teachers, she thought, “Now my dream can come true.” She said “it’s a miracle” she was selected.
“Amazed” by the results, Baltazar said she has seen dramatic improvements in her students since she implemented the program earlier this year. Even her lowest-performing students are showing understanding of important reading skills.
Marissa Chavez wanted to have a lending library for her students. With her grant, she was able to purchase books, iPads, exercise balls and decorations for her kindergarten classroom at Bret Tarver Elementary. The library gives her students access to books they didn’t have before and the exercise balls allow them to get out their pent-up energy and focus on the tasks assigned.
Cori Long (Neely Traditional Academy) and Mary McGraw (Anza Trail School) also wanted to improve literacy in their classrooms.
Long created a reading resource room that has books for students as well as informational resources for teachers.
McGraw said she was originally going to purchase physical books for her classroom, but ended up using her grant money to purchase Chromebooks to give her students access to even more books online. She said her students use them regularly to read, gather information and take reading quizzes.
“It’s really such a wonderful dream come true for a teacher. I can get muchneeded items for my classroom,” she said. “This has created opportunities for my students that they didn’t have before.”