Local Teachers Present at National Literacy Conference

 Do you need your ears to read?  Trish Keck and Molly Jan Weger from Savoy ISD presented a session called “Using Your Eyes, Ears, and Brain to Read” at the 2007 Reading Recovery Conference and Early Literacy Institute held each year in the Dallas area for educators all over the United States.  This year’s conference was held at the Adams Mark Hotel in Dallas on October 24-26. Trish Keck and Molly Weger share a first grade classroom and teach Reading Recovery at Savoy Elementary.  Trish Keck, from Savoy, has been a classroom teacher for 13 years. Molly Weger, from Bells, has been teaching at Savoy for 31 years.  Both teachers were trained for Reading Recovery 12 years ago. They continue their training monthly under the expert guidance of teacher leader Carol Southerland at Crutchfield Elementary School in Sherman.  Ms. Southerland also accepted honors at the Reading Recovery conference for ten years of service as a Reading Recovery training site. Reading Recovery is a first grade reading intervention program which ensures struggling readers are accelerated through one-on-one instruction with a trained reading specialist.  The program was just awarded the highest award of any reading program nation-wide by the What Works in Reading National Clearinghouse. Both teachers agree their teaching was transformed by this outstanding program.  “I love Reading Recovery.  It has by far had the greatest impact on my teaching of any training I have ever received.  I am fortunate to work at a school that supports Reading Recovery in order to put kids first,” Weger stated.  The idea for the Early Literacy presentation, which emphasizes the importance of monitoring what we read by listening to ourselves, came about through work with a Reading Recovery child and has continued to develop over the last two years.