Reading Recovery Teacher Grade One

Brookview Elementary School
Indianapolis, IN

Leah Ward, who teaches at Brookview Elementary School in Indianapolis, is the first Reading Recovery Teacher Leader in Indiana. "Reading Recovery," explains Ms. Ward, "is a first grade one-to-one tutorial program that helps accelerate the rate at which the lowest achieving students learn to read." Ms. Ward, who has already trained eleven teachers and is currently training eleven more, believes that through the techniques and philosophies she imparts to the teachers in her program, she is able to transform more lives than in a single classroom setting. The marked increase in the number of first graders being advanced to the second grade attests to the success of the Reading Recovery program. Ms. Ward thinks that children can only achieve self-esteem when they "recognize that they can do something well. Every educator," she says, "must help children learn how to do something well, whether it is part of the curriculum or not."