Photo: Lisa Bontje
Team Read is thrilled to partner with four (yes, four!) new schools this year and launch additional 4th grade programs in both Seattle and Highline.
Kimball, Concord, Highland Park, and Roxhill elementary schools will join 13 other tutoring sites to offer Team Read programming this Fall. Combined with our existing programs, this enables Team Read to serve more than 450 student readers, including fourth graders who need continued support after leaving the core program. We anticipate employing about 500 teens this year, and for many of them, this will be their first-ever job, providing opportunity to build critical work skills in a meaningful context.
In the months of September and October, Team Read staff and coach alumni from the program hit the pavement at local middle and high schools to recruit reading coaches for all our sites. Any teens interested in working for Team Read are encouraged to learn more and apply online. Applications to work this fall are due September 25.
We are also excited to roll out new strategies and materials for our teens. This year, coaches will support their elementary students’ social-emotional learning (SEL) using conversation tools created by district SEL specialists. In addition, Team Read is providing teens with games and brain-science informed strategies to help their students boost phonological awareness and word decoding skills. Both of these innovations will bring our Team Read curriculum more closely in line with student classroom work and the methodologies being used to both close and prevent reading gaps.
With so much change in the air, we are looking forward to that moment when the teens and students settle down together in pairs, getting to work, and building friendships. Notes Judy Margrath, Team Read Director of Organizational Expansion, “We know the readers and teens will both benefit from this unique and successful reading support opportunity!”