Six down, 24 to go. Lucy Gillian, freshman, set a goal to read 30 books by the end of the school year. Currently, Gillian is reading “Powerless” by Lauren Roberts. 

“I really love fiction and fantasy,” Gillian said. 

Gillian said she doesn’t think it will be a challenge to achieve because she has been an avid reader since third grade. 

However, Gillian said she has noticed her peers struggling to fulfill their literacy needs, which is an issue faculty and staff have noted as well. 

Teachers and administrators around the school have been implementing a new school-wide academic improvement goal set by Principal Dr. Tracey Waeckerle: increasing students’ literacy skills. 

Gillian said this push is necessary.

“A lot of people, in my grade even, are struggling to read quite small books,” Gillian said. “It’s just a skill that everyone needs to work on.”

One strategy for increasing literacy in the building is through increased library lessons for language arts classes. Gillian said her ninth grade language arts class recently visited the library, where the librarians offered books of multiple genres and gave them a rundown of the library. 

“I feel like reading, especially comprehension, is really great for students to have because then they’re about to understand more of what’s being thrown at them throughout the year,” Gillian said. 

Making the Decision

Principal Dr. Tracey Waeckerle gathered information and data on reading test scores and ACT scores in order to make the decision to focus on promoting literacy school-wide. 

“The more data you have, the more information you have to be able to say ‘we need support here’ or ‘we as a building need to focus on this’,” Dr. Waeckerle said. 

Dr. Waeckerle said the data did not show anything that was a “huge red flag,” only that there was room for improvement in that area. 

Last year’s building-wide goal was to reduce the number of failing grades in general. This year, Dr. Waeckerle said, they are focusing more on specific factors that contribute to failing grades, such as literacy.

“You have to control one variable at a time to pinpoint what’s making change,” Dr. Waeckerle said. 

The goal is that the new literacy policy will work in tandem with the new attendance and phone policies to provide increased focus and more student presence in the classroom, Dr. Waeckerle said. 

Admin has removed the personal/other option from the reason choices for absences and established “tech red zones” where technology such as phones can’t be used.

Each class is starting from a different point when it comes to implementing literacy teaching, Dr. Waeckerle said. English or social studies always has a large focus on literacy skills, whereas it hasn’t been quite as intentional in a physical education or an art class. 

“All our teachers were tasked to do is to figure out ‘What’s our baseline?’” Dr. Waeckerle said. “Our task is to just be a little more intentional about increasing our access to literacy resources.”

Promoting the Library

Brittany Sharitz, library media specialist, is leading a new team of literacy leads who will be helping teachers in every department to incorporate more literacy opportunities into their lesson plans. Ray Holmes, librarian; Anna Gray, social studies teacher; and Megan Burian, gifted resource counselor, make up the other members of this smaller team.

Sharitz and the literacy team will also be working closely with a larger literacy promotion team, made up of teachers from every department to discuss how they can provide additional resources and support to students.

“As a school, we just want all of our students to feel really prepared for whatever comes after high school,” Sharitz said. “Boosting literacy across the board, whether it be with traditional, graphic, numerical, or visual literacy will make students more prepared for secondary education or the workplace.”

A large part of the push to improve literacy is to realize that literacy is not only reading and writing in ELA classes, Sharitz said. 

“In science class, you do have to be good with data and know how to read graphs and tables of information,” Sharitz explained. “Math teachers are also inherently literacy teachers because they’re getting students focused on numbers and understanding formulas and data.”

Sharitz said the library is a key part of the push to increase literacy, providing various opportunities and programs for students to get engaged with reading. These include short video book reviews, book clubs and other activities and events. 

There were more than 15,500 individual books checked out from the library last year, Sharitz said, which the library staff is hoping to increase with various events to increase student interest. 

A total of 692 ELA and other classes went to the library last year, Sharitz said, attending seminars and having independent reading time. Many ELA classes have already started visiting the library this year, 

Teaching Differently

In junior Kris Miller’s AP Art and Design class, instead of reading novels or textbooks, students complete Written Evidence for each of their pieces. In class, students learn how to communicate their theme concisely as they have a limited word count for their submissions.

“We discussed that we need to be more consistent in our writing styles and be able to fit more details in very small spaces and very small word caps,” Miller said. 

Miller said they have also discussed media literacy in terms of what is copyright and what they are allowed to use for references. 

“You need to be able to alter it and use other references that can’t look the same. It has to be your own work, not copying anything else,” Miller said.

Catherine Chirco, engineering teacher, said that she has not seen a noticeable decrease in literacy in her subject, but she will work to implement more literacy-positive activities.

“I’m considering, along with my fellow department teachers, doing something like a word of the week having to do with engineering,” Chirco said. “Keeping students engaged while learning vocabulary is important.”

In the past, Chirco said she shied away from having students read articles, instead choosing to watch videos for more student engagement. Now, Chirco said, she will implement articles and other things in order to naturally embed literacy into her lesson plans. 

Daniel Moi, senior, plans to major in chemical engineering and said Kevin Sharitz, engineering teacher, encourages literacy through communication in the Computer Integrated Manufacturing class. 

“Obviously in literature classes, like ELA classes, that communication is needed. But there’s also engineering classes where you have to put away your phones and communicate more effectively with our teachers,” Moi said. 

Moi said learning how to clearly communicate now will be beneficial in his future when he has to write grants and present research. 

“There’s just a stereotype that engineers or scientists have a hard time getting their point across,” Moi said. “So I think having future engineers being able to communicate more effectively, with something like a nuclear engineer getting their points across to the Congress, is beneficial.”

Ed Bolton, chemistry teacher, on the other hand, said he has noticed a measurable decrease in student willingness to read books or even textbooks.

“They just don’t even view that as a viable resource,” Bolton said. 

Bolton is taking a similar approach to Chirco, working in more passages that students have to read and answer questions about in order to exercise their reading abilities.

Personal reading is something Bolton enjoys, and he said he will make sure that if students bring in books for personal use, he will ask them about it and get them interested. 

“I’m by no stretch of the imagination an expert on literacy, but what I can do is ask people to read and talk to kids about what they’re reading or encourage them to read more,” Bolton said.

This story was originally published on Marquette Messenger on September 24, 2024.