Everyone is talking about the reading crisis. But inside the “Mississippi Miracle,” it’s all about comprehension.
Aside from its accountability measures, the law also provided $9.5 million in annual funding for literacy coaches and teacher training. (Today it’s up to $15 million a year.) Michelle Nowell, the associate state superintendent overseeing curriculum and instruction, runs a team of 57 coaches focusing on kindergarten through third grade, with 22 more due to be hired before the next school year. Those coaches float among districts, focusing on those that need the most improvement. “If you said, ‘Why do you think y’all been so successful in K-3?’ I would say it’s boots on the ground with our literacy coaches,” Nowell says. “We are not evaluative, we’re not punitive. We build relationships, and we’re there to help.”
Many districts, including Jefferson County, have carved out money for their own coaches. Last fall, Hammitte hired fourth-grade teacher Timothy Queen as the elementary school’s instructional coach. Queen, who’s also a cheerleading coach at nearby Alcorn State University, is a ball of energy and enthusiasm, constantly doling out hugs and fist bumps to students as his long braid bounces against his shoulders. His job is to train his colleagues, not work with students, but he can end up functioning as a second teacher during a given lesson.
With the all-important test approaching, both Queen and principal Shameka Woods are focusing much of their energy on third-grade classes. The result is that, at least during the spring, Glass is rarely leading her classroom alone. When she breaks her 20-ish students into small groups, she can check on half of them while Queen or Woods handles the rest. When a boy starts nodding off, Queen escorts him into the hallway to splash water on his face. As Glass talks through which letter combinations form which sounds, Queen jumps in to guide a brief discussion of the vowel sound in “cycle.” “What does that second letter sound like?” he asks, prompting one talkative boy to suggest “i.” “What’s the other letter” that makes an “i” sound, Queen responds. “Y!” the kids yell triumphantly.
Though they both lead English classes, Glass and Hamberlin teach profoundly different subjects. Glass’ goal is to get her students to read words and sentences, to connect “c-y-c-l-e” to an image of a bike and understand the basic series of events in a story. Hamberlin’s students have to be able to read a multi-paragraph passage, identify the main idea, find supporting details, and draw inferences.
As a result, third-grade class periods are a stream of engaging activities: diagramming sounds on the board, watching a YouTube song, calling out answers, doing call-and-response. Hamberlin’s eighth graders sit quietly and read long passages about topics ranging from how elephants use their trunks to 19th-century history. The Mississippi Miracle suggests the state may have cracked the code of how to teach basic literacy. The conundrum is that even there, success peters out when it comes to translating words into conceptual thinking.
“Sometimes students are distracted by the format of the test, and so they get the practice test and they read the paragraph and answer the questions,” says Laurie Lee, who co-leads the Adolescent Literacy Alliance, which ran a pilot training program for fourth- through eighth-grade teachers in three Mississippi school districts this school year. “But ultimately what will help is if the kids can actually read the texts and comprehend.”
