Research shows a strong link between third grade reading aptitude and career success. Emerging from the pandemic, Puerto Rico charter school Vimenti sought to strengthen language skills for its K-6 students, starting with a program to bolster its teachers.
“I think we all know that COVID was a big factor in kids missing one to two school years, probably at critical ages, from pre-K, first [grade] and not having access to literacy instruction,” says Nathaly Batista-Morales, TNTP director of academics. “And that led to, what do I do with this kid who is two years behind, and how scary is it for me to actually put grade-level text in front of them?”
Vimenti is Puerto Rico’s first public charter school and serves 274 students who live in public housing. In addition to academic success, it is committed to economic and social mobility for the families it supports. The school looked to nonprofit TNTP to help make significant strides towards its mission, starting with teachers.
“A lot of teachers are not actually trained to support students in an effective way who have unfinished learning,” adds Bonnie Driscoll, TNTP director of academics. “We know the fire that brings people to teaching. I feel like some people feel like that fire has been put out a little bit or the light has been dimmed for them.”
The organization’s signature program, Good to Great, refuels that fire. Created in 2015, Good to Great provides in-person training and instructional materials for teachers, which are especially important as education standards have gotten more complex. Batista-Morales says the program can assist well-meaning teachers who fear the new standards could damage their students’ confidence.
“As the bar has gone up, teachers have this feeling of protecting children, as in, ‘My kid won’t be successful with that, so how do you bring it to where they are? How do you water this down?’ The intention is never a bad one, but what we end up doing is providing content that is a couple grade levels below so children really never have a time to close that gap,” she says.
While TNTP has provided Good to Great to more than 700 teachers in 12 states, this engagement with Vimenti was unique. For the first time, the program was delivered in dual languages – Spanish and English. That created several different challenges and opportunities. The first, the lack of high-quality instructional materials written in Spanish.
“From a content perspective, we had a lot of discussion around what does their model of instruction look like, what does their current practice look like, and then we had to develop a different approach and set of materials for students,” Driscoll says.
This created the opportunity to feature complex texts full of rich vocabulary and themes written by Puerto Rican authors so the instruction was culturally responsive and affirming to students. Once the daily in-person coaching and debriefs began, Driscoll says another challenge involved building an intentional culture to shift the mindset of the 14 teachers who were skeptical the Good to Great methods could work.
The program lasted four months and results could be seen almost daily once teachers integrated their training. Student responses to questions about readings included longer words and paragraphs. The use of metaphors, similes, and higher-level vocabulary increased. Classroom discussions were more robust. Teacher and student self-assurance climbed. Batista-Morales admits she was just as excited as the teachers were.
“I grew up on the island going to public school,” Batista-Morales says. “I held onto beliefs and had huge questions about what kids can do because they are growing up in really challenging circumstances where they might not get as much exposure to experiences or academic language in the ways that are valued by schooling. So, it was a shift for me too – to see they can do all of this.”
Data collection and analysis are a part of the Good to Great program – to measure effectiveness. Teachers reported high satisfaction with the training. Student surveys indicated a higher level of motivation and expectations from their teachers. For a community where generations have lived in public housing and faced poverty, faced challenges in accessing health care and more, Driscoll says the outcomes so far indicate a new cycle of continuous improvement in and out of the classrooms.
“We want every teacher and every student to see themselves as a thinker; somebody who can learn, as somebody who can contribute,” she says. “I think that relates to what it looks like in this day and age to be able to navigate your life and work. It requires more than just sitting and drilling through some low-level skills. They need to talk to each other. They need to write. They need to express themselves in speaking and writing, and they need to have the tools to do that.”