The excitement of starting a new school year is something comparable to midnight on New Year’s. A space full of hope, joy, and reflection. As we begin to launch this new school year, I can’t help but think back to the summer of 2017. I had walked into a brand new school for the upcoming year. It was a new grade, new community, new everything. Upon entering my room, I was handed three texts and told, “these are the books we read, just connect them to the standards. You gotta sink or swim.” Our school had provided educators with complete autonomy of instructional materials, and reported in the bottom fourth percentile in the state.

Early in the year, it became very obvious that I was sinking with Nico. I had been asked to report students’ reading levels from a now debunked reading assessment, that supported students using best guesses when they became stuck on a word, among two other cueing systems that guided students to look around the word for answers. Nico began reading to me a book about a neighborhood getting a new carousel filled with ponies. He read:

“ I hop the ponds” said Ben “ I hop air wit ponds.” When it came time to recall what he had read, Nico simply looked at me and said, “what is with these ponds?”

This is a student who had been in our school for years, was close to 9 and could not read. I knew that students who were not reading at grade level by fourth grade were four times more likely to drop out of high school. Nico could not read a first grade text. Something was missing yet my grade-level standards didn’t explain this.

Upon digging, I learned that Nico was not alone: just 4 out of 10 fourth graders in my state could read proficiently. I began researching theories and practice, participated in graduate courses focused on struggling readers, and collaborated with colleagues to analyze data and chart student success. I did all of this in vacuum, because the materials I had did not focus on building foundational reading skills for students like Nico. Fortunately, my principal saw my passion for this

work and created a content-specific coaching position. To put it another way, we invested in the implementation of best practices when it came to literacy.

This spring, Massachusetts passed the Right to Read law which requires that districts implement an evidence-based curriculum that includes all five parts of the Science of Reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. In addition to these high-quality materials (known as HQIM), our department of education must provide support in training teachers, paraprofessionals, and reading specialists in the K-3 space. There is a parallel between this statewide law and what happened at my school. Nico was my moment of realizing that we were missing something in how we taught our students to read. Now is the time to create the conditions for teachers across the Commonwealth to begin to swim.

In my coaching role, my sole purpose is to support our teachers’ learning and their implementation of effective HQIM.

Curriculum is a powerful bridge between state standards and daily classroom instruction. With these intentional shifts, including a coaching position, teacher training and support, and HQIM, our school grew from the fourth to the 41st percentile in five years.

This growth was not by accident. It required budget, staffing, teacher voice, as well as intentionally building capacity for adult learning. Now that the Right to Read act is law, the state must step up and do what our school did, by ensuring all educators have access to professional development and ongoing feedback.

In my practice, I ensure that all literacy teachers have meaningful professional learning opportunities to internalize the HQIM they use with their students. We utilize a backwards-design approach: Identify where a student like Nico needs to go, determine how the curriculum can guide us there, and pinpoint what each of our student’s need for us to do to thrive as a reader.

We also make sure that support lasts beyond a one-time session and is content-specific and ongoing. I’m on the ground supporting teachers daily in their implementation of HQIM. As a team, we continue to reflect on our students’ goals and make adjustments in real time.

Massachusetts has a unique opportunity to make literacy the reality for every child, but we need to ensure that educators are empowered to implement new practices effectively and sustainably so that they can, ultimately, drive improved student outcomes. Our students deserve nothing but the most effective and relative instruction, and educators nothing but the opportunities to continue to develop their craft through supportive learning experiences.

Jillian Geraghty is a literacy instructional facilitator at the John F. Kennedy School in Boston.