Following the passage of the LEARNS Act, many former public school students are exploring enrolling in Catholic schools.
As many of these students join parochial schools, academic interventionists are working hard to catch these students up from learning delays during and after the COVID-19 pandemic and prepare them for the rigors of Catholic education.
“Each student has different academic needs, and for those that might struggle, an interventionist can meet those students where they are and support and guide them to their fullest potential,” said Theresa Hall, superintendent of Catholic schools.
“Interventionists in our Catholic schools are key to meeting the diverse learning needs of our students,” said Marguerite Olberts, associate superintendent for marketing. “As our schools gain new students due to the Education Freedom Accounts as part of the LEARNS Act, we anticipate the need for more interventionist in Catholic schools throughout the state.”
Interventionists in Catholic schools said they are ready to meet the challenges these students face.
Melissa Griggs, a full-time reading interventionist at St. Joseph School in Fayetteville, is a former public school teacher who decided to become a reading interventionist at the elementary school where she was working in the early 2000s and fell in love with it immediately.
“I loved the impact I was able to make by working with small groups of students,” she said. “I feel like students learn best in a small group setting.”
Griggs said the pandemic highlighted the need for interventionists in education.
“Interventionists have always been needed in all schools, both private and public,” she said. “I think the increased need for interventionists began after COVID due to kids missing so much school.”
Griggs predominantly helps students with reading and phonics in kindergarten through sixth grade. She said the beginning of the school year always presents the most challenges.
“We have to test, identify, group and then schedule the students who will be working with us during the year,” she said. “This process takes at least two-three weeks. Scheduling a time period to pull students from their classrooms is also very challenging, especially when several teachers request the same time. We have to consider everyone’s daily schedule to find a suitable time that works.”
Griggs works with former teacher Toni Been, who became a reading interventionist in 2020 as schools scrambled to navigate the pandemic and support students.
“I was hired with EANS (Emergency Assistance for Non-Public Schools) funds to assist our full-time interventionist,” Been said. “When students needed direct, explicit reading and phonics instruction, Zoom, although better than nothing, wasn’t the most effective teaching method for most kids. Many students fell behind, especially emergent readers. Some kids needed a boost to get back on track…”
In addition to teaching reading and phonics to students in kindergarten through eighth grade, Been also teaches math to a handful of students who need extra support.
“There are various reasons students find these subjects challenging. Reading is a process, and students progress at different rates,” she said. “Students with learning disabilities and developmental delays, as well as ELL (English Language Learner) students, might need extra support.”
She added, “Since the LEARNS Act has been implemented, we are seeing more students with diverse and complex learning needs. My challenge is to meet the needs of my students the best I can.”
At Catholic High School in Little Rock, Kim Dodge became an interventionist when she saw the impact of learning disabilities in her own children.
“I worked for eight years as a physical therapist in a pediatric clinic before realizing in 2012 that my own boys struggled with dyslexia, and the schools were not identifying or servicing them,” she said.
Dodge is now training to become a Certified Academic Language Therapist (CALT), which is the highest level of dyslexia practitioner in Arkansas.
“Every school needs to have two to three CALTs if they want to see a jump in reading scores,” she said.
Dodge said the LEARNS Act and the Right to Read Law opened up opportunities for interventionists while raising awareness of the need for them.
“Students who struggle to read must be identified early, and teachers must be highly trained to teach the code of reading,” she said. “Arkansas’ NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) reading scores are dismal, with only 26 percent of our students testing as proficient on grade level in reading. This is not just a problem related to reading disabilities. Our schools need intense systemic change.”
Dodge said teachers need more training to identify reading problems in order to begin remediating issues at lower grade levels.
“I believe parochial schools have a duty to rise to this challenge, and there is help available,” she said. “There are programs like BUILD that would enhance kindergarten through third-grade general classroom instruction, and CALTs could service more severe reading difficulties outside the classroom.”
Dodge primarily helps dyslexic students at Catholic High, as the repercussions of the learning disorder can be seen in all school subjects.
“Because reading impacts all subjects, including math, all subjects can present a challenge to someone with dyslexia,” Dodge said. “Higher-level textbook reading and expository writing are extremely difficult if one hasn’t even mastered the basics.”
Students are tackling these challenges while also struggling with other issues common among Generation Z.
“We are facing an uphill battle with some students ill prepared in basic reading skills. However we are also seeing device addiction, attention fragmentation, more absenteeism, anxiety, depression and apathy,” Dodge said. “Parochial schools can offer a ray of hope. We can provide the unconditional love of Christ. We are fighting to teach our kids about the dangers of a technology-obsessed culture. We can offer a soft landing place that feels like home while also providing the highest level of academic challenge.”
Mallory Manion is her sixth year as a elementary-level reading interventionist at St. Joseph School in Conway. Like Dodge, Manion supports students in reading, spelling and writing, while working to identify and manage dyslexia.
“Approximately 20 percent of people are dyslexic,” she said. “This means that certain areas of the brain do not process language in the same way and may have deficits in reading and spelling. One in five students automatically need intervention targeted to their areas of growth. That does not also include students with other learning differences or students that may just need a little extra boost.”
Manion said the greatest challenge she faces as the only interventionist for nine classrooms is finding space and time.
“I have a maximum of 28 spots, and that is already under 20 percent of our school population,” she said. “Therefore, I know I am missing kids that need support, but there isn’t anything I can do about it. It is very difficult to accept that, but there aren’t enough resources to hire a second interventionist.”