The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Longtime educator sees reading as the key to everything
Christy Malnar, a teacher at Lake Elementary School in the Mentor School District, is a 1991 graduate of Bowling Green State University who has been teaching reading for about 23 years.
Currently, she is an instructional coach and Title I teacher, meaning she serves as a model and coach for kindergarten through sixth-grade teachers, and works with at-risk readers in the lower elementary grades.
Title I is a government-funded program from which districts are able to get funds to support teachers like Malnar, who specializes in at-risk students.
“We find the at-risk readers through different types of assessments,” Malnar said. “We take the
kids who are at risk and go into the classroom and do small-group reading. My job is to push them to get them reading at grade level.”
Malnar feels that reading is important because reading entails everything.
“You need to be a good reader to be good at math, science and social studies,” Malnar said. “It all comes down to that. Math has its own language too, but, you still need the basics of reading.”
According to Malnar, she was shaped as an educator for reading and credits her reading recovery training as one of her strengths, helping to make her the teacher she is today.
She originally started working with the lower elementary students in grades kindergarten through second. After the district started receiving the Title I grant money, she was able to become an instructional coach and work with not only upper elementary students, but the teachers as well.
“Back when I became a Title I teacher, the district was really good at the Title I programming but did not have a Title I curriculum in place,” Malnar said.
Malnar said she couldn’t use the material and lessons that teachers used in the classrooms, so it was her job to create the curriculum for Title I.
“Our district has done a great job going from an adaptive program to this guided reading program,” Malnar said. “So, it’s nice to see that’s where we are today. I had to do that in my job as a Title I teacher and now I get to see that the teachers are doing it, so that is good.”
Malnar believes that to reach the kids, you have to work in small groups.
“To really shape kids, you do need to have a small group,” Malnar said. “You can’t have eight kids, that’s a lot for at-risk kids. For my job and Lake students, it needs to be lower to reach the kids.”
“You need to be a good reader to be good at math, science and social studies.” — Christy Malnar, a teacher at Lake Elementary School