Valley Leadership program aims to close literacy gap by helping teachers

Jan. 6

Education advocacy group Valley Leadership has been putting leaders in classrooms to substitute for teachers once a month to help them complete mandatory training.

The volunteers are professionals who come from all different backgrounds such as finance and medical fields and volunteer because they are concerned about education in Arizona.

These leaders come into classrooms, giving teachers time to train in the Science of Reading program, which is a state requirement that arms teachers with new skills backed by years of research to help their students read proficiently.

States like Alabama trained teachers in the reading program, which went from ranking 49th in the country for fourth grade reading to currently ranking 34th. Valley Leadership’s program is in 11 Valley schools, after launching at the Mesa School District.

How Valley Leadership helped one school district

Karen Quick volunteers once a month to cover a sixth grade class at Irene Lopez Academy of the Arts, located in south Phoenix, a part of the Roosevelt School District.

Quick worked as a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) at a global technology company for 34 years and is now retired. Quick said stewardship is her “biggest core value” and discussed why participating in the program was important to her.

“We all know that literacy is a huge issue in the Valley and in the state, and if kids can’t learn to read, they can’t read to learn,” Quick said.

LaKitda Miles is a second grade teacher at Irene Lopez Academy, whose had Valley Leadership substitutes cover her classroom. She said having the same person come into her class consistently makes a huge difference.

“Actually, it’s more work preparing for a substitute than to just teach on a regular day-to-day basis,” Miles said. “But being able to have someone that you know is experienced in the different dynamics that you’re doing in class and experiences that we have in class is a little bit easier to be able to leave the materials that you’re comfortable with.”

Dani Portillo is the Roosevelt School District Superintendent and is grateful for the partnership with Valley Leadership. The nonprofit approached Portillo and asked how they could best support her teachers and students.

“Some of the challenges that we’ve encountered at schools, of course, are funding,” Portillo said, “So ensuring that we have the proper student and staff ratio ensuring that we have time for our staff to be able to be compensated while they’re getting training is something that is a huge challenge.”

Portillo added having leaders from different fields helps the field of education as a whole because the volunteers have a deeper understanding of the work that teachers take on.

“Once they’ve had their foot in the classroom, not as a student because all of us think we know how schools work because we went to school, but once these leaders are in the classroom teaching, they have a different perspective,” Portillo said.

“Perhaps a different level of empathy,” Portillo added, “And also understand the challenges that our teachers go through daily.”

Reporting by “Arizona Horizon” Education Solutions Reporter Roxanne De La Rosa. Her role is made possible through grant funding from the Arizona Local News Foundation’s Arizona Community Collaborative Fund and Report for America.