Reader to Reader Receives 5-Year Grant to Expand Navajo Nation Work

We are jumping for joy over our new 5-year capacity building grant we received to expand our work with Native American high school students on the Navajo Nation in Arizona and New Mexico. 

The grant will enable us to hire an additional full-time staff person to be based in Fort Wingate, New Mexico. 

Our goal is to expand the number of schools that participate in our Blueprint for Success program, which aims to raise college entrance exam scores, and guide students through the college admission process.

Last year, thanks to the program, students at Wingate High School in Fort Wingate scored 30% higher on their ACT exam than the students that attended the school in 2010-2014. 

We gratefully thank the Fordham Street Foundation for the funding of this grant.

ACT Scores Soar at Wingate High

Reader to Reader’s Navajo Nation Outreach Coordinator, Jeannette Ortega, has been doing an amazing job at Wingate High School in Fort Wingate, New Mexico.

She teaches 6 classes a day focusing on ACT test prep and college readiness.

The results of her hard work are clear, as ACT scores have soared 30 percent since she arrived there two years ago.

The dramatic rise in scores makes more students eligible for college, and makes college more affordable, as more students are eligible for scholarships.

Over 200 Mentors in Reader to Reader's Read, Think, Share Program

There are already more than 200 students from seven different colleges work as reading mentors in our Read, Think, Share program this year, helping students in middle school and high school become more confident readers and writers.

Here, eight of our newest mentors from Amherst College take part in a follow-up training to help them build their own skills at working with students.

The college students are working with 1,400 low-income adolescents in Massachusetts and New Mexico.

Meet Jeanette Ortega, Reader to Reader Navajo Nation Outreach Coordinator

Reader to Reader’s amazing Navajo Nation Outreach Coordinator Jeannette Ortega helps high school students on the Navajo Nation prepare for ACT/SAT tests, college applications, and making the transition to college life.  Here she is in her classroom at Wingate High School, Ft. Wingate, New Mexico.

Reader to Reader’s work on the Navajo Nation is funded in part by the Fordham Street Foundation, Lynn & Jean Miller, and the Hiatt Family Foundation.

This our fourth year having a full-time staff person based on the Navajo Nation, and  just like the Outreach Coordinators that preceded her, Jeannette is doing a spectacular job of helping students prepare for college.

Jeanette is a 2015 graduate of Amherst College, and previously worked as a summer intern for Reader to Reader in 2014.

Read, Think, Share Results Presented at Literacy Essentials Conference

Last weekend, our Director of Mentoring Programs, Dennis Quinn, presented results from our Read, Think, Share mentoring program at the 9th annual Literacy Essentials Conference at Central Connecticut State University.

Students working with Read, Think, Share mentors report increases in reading persistence and comprehension, along with stronger writing skills.  Most importantly, the program makes reading and writing a daily habit.

One student Dennis featured in the poster said, “This class has improved my reading. It has made me more interested in books, and I've been reading a lot more because of this class. I've read about six books and am still reading more.”

It's all made possible by our amazing crew of mentors!

Newspaper Features Read, Think, Share Mentoring Program

Amherst-based Reader to Reader takes literacy efforts online with help of Five College students

Special to The Republican By Cori Urba

on March 25, 2015 

AMHERST - Boguslaw Janiszewski, a second-year student at Hampshire College studying English literature, creative writing and philosophy, has never met any of the public school students he mentors in reading: It's done online.

"But I know first hand that, by exciting these individuals and by reading with them what they want to read - freely - the students we work with are able to offer themselves fully to a book or piece of text and truly digest the material, whether emotional or semantic," he says.

Janiszewski is a mentor in the Reader to Reader program.

"It's really interesting because by just pointing out certain aspects or perspectives in a text, these kids really do just exhibit their love for books and a premature possibility of studying in the field of academia by really asking and answering some hard-ball, mind-bending questions," he added.

Housed in the Cadigan Center for Religious Life on the campus of Amherst College, Reader to Reader involved in 2014 more than 135 Pioneer Valley college students in mentoring more than 1,000 mostly middle-school students in its Read, Think, Share literacy mentoring program that engaged public schools in the region as well as a school on a Navajo Reservation in New Mexico.

Read, Think, Share is an innovative literacy program that engages college students who read the same book with a middle-school student and share an online conversation about the book through daily blogs between mentor and student. The mentoring program aims to increase a love for reading among students and to increase their reading proficiency and their emotional investment in attending school.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

St. Michaels Students Take College Discovery Class

Meg Holladay, our hard-working Navajo Outreach Coordinator, is teaching a College Discovery class at St. Michael Indian School in St. Michaels, Arizona. 

Pictured above are students practicing a full-length practice ACT exam Reading section. Test scores have improved dramatically thanks to her work.

The Navajo Outreach Program is funded in part by the Fordham Street Foundation and the Hiatt Family Foundation.

Navajo Pine Students Enjoy Book Donation

Students at Navajo Pine High School in Navajo, New Mexico, enjoy the library’s latest book donation from Reader to Reader.

Practice Makes Perfect at St. Michael Indian School

On Nov. 22, 12 students came to St. Michael's Indian School in St. Michaels, Arizona, on a Saturday morning to take a full-length practice ACT under the watchful eye of Reader to Reader’s Navajo Outreach Coordinator, Meg Holladay. We started bright and early at 8AM, the same time the real ACT begins, and the students worked hard on the test until around noon. Eight students chose to write the optional essay section of the test. After time was up, we graded the practice tests together. Students were able to compare their scores to the national averages, and see which sections were going well for them and which they needed to improve. Many told us it was a valuable experience for them, and everyone went home to a well-deserved weekend of rest!

At Work on the Navajo Nation

We are so pleased to welcome Carleton College graduate Meg Holladay as our new Navajo Outreach Coordinator.

Meg is based on the Navajo Nation in St. Michaels, Arizona, where she is bringing a host of services and programs to area schools. 

Through our Blueprint for Success Program, she is helping students with ACT and SAT test prep, college search, college applications, essay writing, and financial aid support.

She is also a resource connector, helping Reader to Reader meet the needs of a wide variety of groups across the 27,000 square-mile Navajo Nation.

Reflections

Two years ago, David Mazor dropped me off three hours west of Albuquerque, a mile and a half up in the high desert. It rained that evening. It was quiet, and the air smoldered with the smell of sage. I'd asked David a hundred times that summer what I would do here. He said that I'd find out when I came. I'd listen and I'd know.

To my last day, I couldn't really tell you what my job was. My business cards say "Navajo Nation Outreach Coordinator." I didn't know that I'd:

- witness a dozen students improve their creative writing through our weekly Writers' Workshop meetings and celebrate their progress with a year-end, well-attended CoffeeHaus

- raise average school-wide ACT scores from 25% below NM and AZ state averages to above state and national averages

- watch an endless stream of books and resources from Reader to Reader fill classrooms and libraries

- travel around the Navajo Nation with the Office of the First Lady to deliver college readiness materials and addresses

- work with the incredible board of the Miss Navajo Council, an organization that mobilizes former pageant winners to give back to their communities

- learn to make frybread (poorly)

- watch my freshmen grow in their writing abilities and put together a magazine of their work

- prepare my shyest students for scholarship interviews

- take the Writers' Workshop to hear writing advice and performances by Luci Tapahonso, Navajo Nation Poet Laureate

- see 97% of SMIS' class of 2014 go on to college

- grow to love those seniors like my own siblings

- and be heartbroken to see them go

... and much more.

My last two years with Reader to Reader won't be my last in the Navajo Nation. Through working with Reader to Reader, I've become interested in ethical, efficient management. This fall, I'm headed to the Yale School of Management to get an MBA with a focus on social enterprise and nonprofit management. After my program, I plan to return to the reservation and work on a project to improve food sovereignty. There - now that I've said it, all of you can hold me accountable.

This post is more about me than I would've liked. Still, it's hard to extricate myself from my last two years. On some level, I want to talk strictly about the honor it has been to represent Reader to Reader in what has become my surrogate home, and what more we could watch unfurl and progress. But that wasn't all. It hasn't become a home because of improved statistics and partnerships formed. We shared a mission, and we fought for it, and we grew to love and respect each other because we did our best to listen. After all, that was my first instruction on the job.

The Navajo Nation is often characterized by poverty and hardship, but that's merely one facet of a diamond. I'm learning to listen, and in these last two years, that listening has allowed me to witness the intense dedication and talent of others, and to learn more than I thought possible. Every day, I'm humbled anew.

On my last night, my friends and I slept on the roof of our trailer. We had unexpected company - friends from over the hill. They talked, and we listened. We talked, and they listened. It grew late, and wind rattled the brush. Our dogs howled and took off across the field, and the cows lowed. A mile and a half closer to the stars, am I any closer to hearing supernovae? Three hours west of Albuquerque, does the universe seem silent, or can I incline my heart to the glory of stars being born, of giants rising, of light unceasing to illuminate the darkest corridors?

--Ophelia Hu

Working with schools on the Navajo and Hopi Nations

During a week-long visit to both the Navajo Nation and Hopi Nation, Reader to Reader's executive director David Mazor met with school officials from a host of schools across the 27,000 square-mile region.

One of the schools new to Reader to Reader is Nizhoni Accelerated Academy in Tuba City, Arizona, a town of 8,000 in the Painted Dessert area on the western end of the Navajo Nation.

Tuba City has 49% unemployment and one-third of its residents do not have electricity or running water in their homes.

The alternative school, which is a public school in the Tuba City Unified School District, is headed by principal Henry Henderson. 

Mr. Henderson was previously the principal at Navajo Pine High School in Navajo, New Mexico.

  

Reader to Reader has a decade-long partnership with Navajo Pine, including having brought a group of Navajo students to Amherst, Massachusetts on a trip chaperoned by Mr. Henderson.

"We are so pleased to work with Mr. Henderson once again to boost the resources of the Nizhoni Accelerated Academy," David Mazor said. "We look forward to greatly increasing the number of books available for their students, and we also hope to involve their students in our Read, Think. Share Mentoring Program."

Reader to Reader's Navajo outreach work is funded through the generous support of the Fordham Street Foundation, the Hiatt Family Foundation, and Jean and Lynn Miller.

Navajo Students Explore Writing at Indigenous Book Festival

Ophelia Hu, Reader to Reader’s Navajo Nation Outreach Coordinator, writes about the exciting field trip her students from St Michaels, Arizona took last week.

Last Friday, the extracurricular Writers’ Workshop of St. Michael Indian School (SMIS) attended the Indigenous Book Festival at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. This year’s festival focus was “Authenticity and Indigeneity.”

Nine of the most dedicated Writers’ Workshop attendants were selected to challenge their abilities, improve their writing skills, and learn from masters of the craft.

After a three-hour morning journey, our day began with a high school writing panel, in which the SMIS students had the full attention of two MFA instructors from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and learned valuable techniques for both poetry and prose-writing. One instructor marveled that our students had honed such unique voices.

After the writing panel, the students and I had the honor of listening to a presentation and poetry recitation by Chamoru poet Craig Santos Perez, who wrote on food colonization in Guam. Craig’s concerns reflected a similar food current in the Navajo Nation and many other reservations, and our students appreciated his great performance.

In the afternoon, we split into four panels depending on our interests, ranging from spiritual healing in literature to interviews of famous poets (including the first Navajo Poet Laureate Luci Tapahonso) to weaving cultural histories into modern narratives.

Throughout the day, I’d seen them engage critically with difficult conversations about authenticity, heritage, and literature.   

These young writers have now spent months honing their crafts. This is some students’ second year in Writers’ Workshop. Through their time, they’ve each better crafted the vehicle through which they tell their stories, share their experiences, and relay their hopes. The maturity with which they do so astounds me, and every piece I have the honor of reading or hearing leaves me humbled.

And then, all along the long drive home through the dark, a few girls sing in unison to a One Direction song; howls of laughter come after a silly joke; they learn what hummus and couscous are; they dance in their seats and dream of decorating the dorm rooms they’ll occupy next year. And I remember that, despite all their maturity and potential and talents, they’re still children – incredible children.

(Reader to Reader’s Navajo Outreach Coordinator is funded through the generous support of the Fordham Street Foundation, the Hiatt Family Foundation, and Jean and Lynn Miller.)

 

Reader to Reader Helps ACT Scores Improve on the Navajo Nation!

Ophelia Hu, Reader to Reader's Navajo Nation Outreach Coordinator, describes the process of teaching SAT prep to seniors at St Michael’s Indian School this year.

We began class ten chairs short and in stifling heat last August in St. Michaels, Arizona. Our task: to improve the ACT scores of St. Michael Indian School's entire senior class with only 250 minutes per week.

For our second year in a row, ACT scores at St. Michael have remained over 1% above the national average, which is a drastic improvement from its standing of over 25% below that average before Reader to Reader began its College Readiness programs at the school.

But the applause certainly doesn't belong to Reader to Reader alone. The accolade belongs to the senior class, who toiled every day, attended optional practice tests in the evenings and on weekends, and achieved impressive personal score improvements. Reader to Reader also provided each student with a free, new copy of an ACT textbook, and both instruction and homework helped students to excel on the test.

I had the privilege of getting to know the remarkable Class of 2014. We worked hard. Not every day was fun. From time to time, students would call in the middle of the night asking for clarification with a concept or to vent about test anxiety. But between recovering math skills and summarizing dense science articles, we had our share of good times, too.

At the end of the course, each senior wrote a letter to the Class of 2015 with their personalized advice for senior year, college readiness, and ACT prep.

The continued success of students at St. Michael shows that all students have a remarkable capacity to grow and learn. We are honored to be a part of that process, and we look forward to getting even more students to take the reins on their future.

Reader to Reader’s Navajo Outreach Coordinator is funded through the generous support of the Fordham Street Foundation, the Hiatt Family Foundation, and Jean and Lynn Miller.

Leading Book Discussions on the Navajo Nation

Amherst College students serving as reading mentors in Reader to Reader’s Navajo Mentoring Program led book discussions at St. Michael Indian School in St. Michaels, Arizona.

With the guidance of Reader to Reader's Navajo Outreach Coordinator, Ophelia Hu, mentors and students discussed Elie Wiesel’s holocaust novel Night.

Reader to Reader staff and the four college students are spending nine days touring the Navajo and Hopi reservations where they are visiting schools that receive book donations and literacy programs from Reader to Reader.

Reader to Reader’s Navajo Outreach Coordinator is funded through the generous support of the Fordham Street Foundation, the Hiatt Family Foundation, and Jean and Lynn Miller.

15,000 Books Arrive on Navajo Nation

A huge truck rumbled up as 15,000 books completed a 5-day journey across the country to the Navajo Nation in Arizona.

The books will be distributed to schools, libraries, Boys & Girls Clubs, Head Start Programs and other areas of need across the 27,000 square-mile Navajo and Hopi reservations.

Reader to Reader staff and four Amherst College students flew to Albuquerque and drove three hours to Window Rock, Arizona to help unload the truck and deliver some of the books. The truck was driven by Navajo Nation Library officials that flew to Massachusetts to pick up the books.

The college students work during the school year in Reader to Reader’s Navajo Mentoring Program and are spending a week working with students at St. Michael Indian School in St. Michaels, Arizona.