Meeting students where they are: How a local literacy program could help kids statewide

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — An initiative at one local school could possibly be a blueprint for helping thousands of students across our state learn how to read.

“‘Mistreats.’ This has three parts: there’s a prefix, a base word and a suffix,” a teacher at Mountain Mahogany Community School told her students.

Learning the breakdown of a word’s sounds looks like your average fifth-grade experience. But the kids in that particular classroom aren’t all in fifth grade. In fact, what grade they’re in doesn’t really matter.

“Instead of focusing on their kind of the grade-level expectations, we’re looking at areas of need for each kid and filling those gaps,” structured literacy coach Alexandra Wilcox said.

It’s called a literacy walk, and the walking places the students where they need to be, not where they’re supposed to be.

“It’s every student getting intervention. They’re walking to a classroom that we have decided best serves them through lots of data dives and individually looking at students,” Wilcox said.

For 50 minutes each school day, kids in grades three through five at Mountain Mahogany Community School are mixed up. Wilcox brought the program to the school about two years ago.

“When my oldest son was in fourth grade, he had been really struggling to learn how to read, and I didn’t really feel like I knew how to support him. So, I started just looking around at what I could do,” Wilcox said. 

Then she realized her son likely wasn’t the only one who needed extra help.

“It really like came down to just watching a kid really struggle with something that I personally believe is a human right, which is the right to learn how to read,” she said.

The size of a literacy walk class also varies, so the kids who need it get that one-on-one time with their teacher. But on the flip side, kids who are excelling can get a more rigorous curriculum.

“It’s really good that we get to like learn with people who are actually in our like level,” fifth grader Steven Gonzales said.

The 11-year-old started going to Mountain Mahogany about a year and a half ago. He said before going to the school, it was harder to read.

“It’s helped like me improve in grammar and me improve with reading and writing and using the correct punctuation,” he said.

Wilcox said Gonzales is one of the students who has succeeded in the program. So now, instead of being bored, he’s learning something new every day.

He’s not the only one, either. Wilcox said they’ve grown about 20% in literacy proficiency since starting. Now, according to PED’s NM Vistas data, they’re sitting at about 47%, which is higher than the district and state averages.

“Our work at Mountain Mahogany is not done. We’re not accepting those numbers as the end result for us,” Wilcox said.

As they keep working, she hopes other schools and districts take note so more kids in New Mexico not only learn how to read but also excel at it.

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