Marie Clay’s Impact: My Reading Recovery Journey Part 1

Thirty years ago, I attended an Awareness Session to learn about an intervention called Reading Recovery.  At that time, Reading Recovery was new in the United States and districts were starting to pay attention to how unique, different, innovative, and effective the intervention was with struggling readers and writers. 

As a literacy specialist at the time, I attended the Awareness Session, and I was struck by some new thinking around intervention.  Reading Recovery accepted all children who needed support for literacy learning, it was a short-term intervention which focused on what children can do and the instruction was designed for each individual student. The theory and practice were not based on a deficit model, but one of integration and acceleration. 

I was intrigued to find out about the year-long training to become a Reading Recovery teacher.  I was impressed that the training was connected to graduate level course work, with a dedicated university trainer to support the training and guide the implementation of Reading Recovery in a district.

This training really interested me.  I had served as a classroom teacher and literacy specialist for many years, but I felt like there was a gap in my practice. With the training and staff development I had up to this point in my career, I felt like I had done my very best to help students. Nevertheless, I still was not able to successfully scaffold all my students where they needed to be in their literacy learning.

I went into the training thinking I am an experienced teacher, I have my master’s degree in education and my Reading Specialist credential, how much was I really going to learn and gain from this training.

Rather quickly, I realized I knew very little about how to teach reading and writing.  This was an opportunity to add to my knowledge base. The training year was rigorous, exciting, humbling, emotional, satisfying, and transformative. I was a different teacher and I felt better equipped to reach all students, particularly those students who struggle with literacy learning.

As a highly trained Reading Recovery teacher, I soon realized I could make an impact on the quality of literacy teaching and learning at my school site.  This began my work as a classroom coach, which soon evolved into providing staff development for the staff.

I soon discovered, Reading Recovery not only changed how I observed and taught students, but it also had a great impact on my school site, especially in the primary grades.  Reading Recovery was now part of the system; the fabric of the school and had a profound effect on classroom instruction and student achievement throughout the entire school.

After serving as a Reading Recovery teacher for 8 years, I wanted more. I had a deep desire to help train more teachers in my district to become Reading Recovery teachers. I wanted them to see the importance of effective intervention and good first teaching.  I wanted them to be equipped to help all students become literate. Therefore, I decided to participate in additional training and become a certified Reading Recovery Teacher Leader. 

I served as the Reading Recovery Teacher Leader in my district for 22 years.  I have had the privilege of training lots and lots of Reading Recovery teachers and maintained a healthy site all these years later.  More importantly, thousands of struggling readers and writers have been given the gift of literacy. 

Marie Clay and her brilliant work has taught me so many things over the years.  I am the educator I am today, thanks to her impact on my work as a literacy teacher and leader.  It would be impossible to include all the lessons I have learned from her and my work in Reading Recovery over the years in this short piece, but I wanted to highlight the most important and impactful ones to me. 

In part 2 of this blog series, I will highlight eight key principles that have directed and guided my work with students, teachers, and administrators, all these years later. 

Eight Guiding Principles