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Empowering Students
GUEST BLOG BY TOM BEREND, SQE DIRECTOR
Somewhere in Ontario, a school board that doesn't yet want to be named is taking baby steps towards adopting Empower Reading. Huge kudos to Pamela Cairncross, an awesome, relentless parent who has been pushing hard on this for years.
Empower Reading is based on the research of Dr Maureen Lovett and her team of researchers at Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto. It is a comprehensive toolbox of research-based strategies and training materials focusing on accurate word recognition using phonological skills, synthetic phonics, and morphology. Empower stands in sharp contrast to whole-language programs such as Reading Recovery that encourage guessing at words from context.
Five years ago, Pamela realized that her son was struggling with reading in grade 1. Her son's school told her not to worry and provided him with the usual accommodations, but it was clear that his teachers were not trained on reading disabilities and he would not get any actual help in learning to read. Pamela started looking around.
Through the International Dyslexia Association Ontario Branch (ONBIDA), Pamela learned about systematic approaches to reading instruction. She worked on phonics with her son at home, and helped him master reading. And then she attended a presentation by Maureen Lovett at Queen's University in early 2012, and heard about Empower Reading. It was a relevation.
Empower was like her home program, but for a whole classroom including training for the teachers. She contacted the principal of the local high school, and urged her to offer the program. This is not an appeal that school principals are typically receptive to, but Pamela was relentless. She and her husband even offered to help pay for it. The principal investigated the program, and courageously took the plunge to put in a pilot program for grades 9-12. It was a huge success, and so it is being rolled into grades 7-8 starting next week
But Pamela wasn't finished yet. Next she went after the school board. Pamela met with trustees, bombarded everyone she could find with information and testimonials, made presentations, and wrote letters. The board had already been talking to Sick Kids. Pamela, with the support of the principal, increased the pressure and momentum.
And so now this school board is making plans to start rolling out Empower Reading this year, perhaps eventually going board-wide. It is a major undertaking, a huge investment in the students, and so clearly the right thing to do. We'd love to applaud them publicly, but they are still working through the details and asked us not to.
Perhaps the trustees would have done this eventually anyhow. However, we like to think that a determined and single-minded parent can move mountains.
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