Reading Recovery for Maine

As a mother and as a professional, I am deeply concerned with the recently recommended appropriation of the state’s education budget and its potential effect on Reading Recovery.

My faith in the Reading Recovery program is based on more than 15 years of having witnessed its benefits and its growth and my very strong desire that it be protected for all children in all ways. The state of Maine is a national leader in Reading Recovery.

I fear deeply that Reading Recovery’s impact could fade from the Maine scene. If that should happen, children nationwide will be profoundly affected, for their teachers look to Maine for leadership.

We must find a way to assure that Reading Recovery will be supported in all of Maine so that it may reach children throughout our state in increasing numbers who will, for many years to come, benefit from the kinds of experiences and outcomes that my own children have experienced. If this happens, the children of the future will reap yet greater

benefits from the Read-ing Recovery program because its never-ending research and its never-ending refinement will assure this. My heart aches knowing what is possible and seeing far too often practices of infinitely lesser value.

Many years ago, as a parent of young, school-age children, myself a parent highly trained and experienced as a teacher, I knew that the road to my children’s receiving the finest instruction in learning to read would require some very skillful navigation on my part. I knew well the vast number of options from which their teachers and schools could choose, and I worked diligently to develop strong relationships with their potential teachers to assure that they received all that I knew could be had. Because of the fact that much of my knowledge was based on a wide range of practices and possibilities

I knew to be effective, I shied away from simple recipes, basal readers or the latest bandwagon programs.

One program, however, piqued my interest and inspired my enthusiasm. Coming from Ohio State University where I had worked on a graduate degree in literacy with the people who eventually brought Reading Recovery to this country, I quickly recognized in that program with its multitude of effective strategies and its enormous and continuous research base, much of what I was looking for, and I began immediately to advocate in order to assure that my children would be the recipients of all that program had to offer.

One of Reading Recovery’s greatest impacts, and there are many, is its

permeation of the entire culture of the school which happens over time in both formal and informal situations. Once a student has completed the Reading Recovery work appropriate for that child, a return to a stimulating classroom that will continue to nurture that development as a reader is a must. Staff development and workshops for all teachers receiving Reading Recovery students back into their classrooms assure that this happens, and the level of sophistication demonstrated by these teachers continues to develop.

The habits my own child formed in grades 1 through 5 at the hands of people who had received much staff development from Reading Recovery experts and who had worked in a school culture in which these ideas were continuously discussed, provide him still today as an adult with the tools he needs to continue his own growth as a reader.

As one with a doctorate in literacy, I continue to marvel and to witness this process with amazement. Learning to read is, for all of us, a lifelong process, and the foundations laid in the earliest years, if sound and based on the finest that research reveals to be sound, assure that this process of learning to read, or improving our reading, continues throughout the life span.

We often hear of schools being identified as not achieving Adequate Yearly Progress, which after bringing Reading Recovery to the school, are eventually identified as Blue

Ribbon Schools.

This is no surprise to me, but how I wish that message could be more widely heard. I know of no other program that has had a greater positive impact upon the lives of children. It is not static.

It not only researches itself continuously, it encourages others with expertise in literacy outside the world of Reading Recovery to examine it critically, to ask key questions and to research it also, with what may be a more objective lens. As a result, it becomes more and more refined, meeting the needs, not only of the individual students, but all of the students whose teachers continue to develop skills and expertise through the Reading Recovery influence.

I have, over the years, questioned its adequate use of all of the five senses. I’ve questioned its understanding of the ability of parents or lack thereof to provide adequate help and support in the home, and I’ve questioned its understanding of the emotional traumas with which some children must cope and how Reading Recovery could make use of that reality to aid in its effective delivery. Every one of these concerns of mine has, over time, been addressed and refined by Reading Recovery, and each of them has been incorporated into the program with increasing effectiveness.

Most reading programs today are formulated, published, advertised and peddled by salespersons whose work it is to convince professionals that their offering affords the biggest bang for its buck. Once that publishing and sales pitch occurs, the amount of research on these many programs is very minimal. Not so with Reading Recovery!

My desire is that all children may have the benefits that my own children received, and those future benefits will be far greater as Reading Recovery continues its refinement. However, if Reading Recovery fades from the scene, children will receive far less.

I repeat: My heart aches knowing what is possible and seeing far too often practices of infinitely lesser value. I can think of no other program or possibility found in schools today that has a greater impact upon the education of all children, for its foundation is laid in the earliest years of school, is lasting, and positively affects in increasing degrees through the school years a student’s performance and achievement in all academic, extracurricular, artistic and cultural pursuits.

Carolyn Whipps Leick, Ed.D., is a retired educator who lives in Orono.