Medford working to improve literacy skills

Annie Sager used an analogy to describe her position with a new program at Medford Elementary School.
“I am the gap filler,” Sager said. “A lot of kids would slip through the cracks and it would not be a good situation.”
Sager said she tutors kindergarten to third-grade students to help them overcome challenges in literacy. She works through AmeriCorps, which offers Minnesota Reading Corps, a program implemented at Medford Elementary this school year.
Each week, Sager said she pulls 13 students aside to work with them one-on-one for 20 minutes in the hallway. On this particular day, she helped kindergartener Leslie Vazquez with her letter sounds using letter cards.
At the start of the school year, Sager had to go back to the basics with Vazquez as she was drastically underperforming with literacy. Now, nearly six months later, Vazquez has made tremendous progress.
“She is my poster child for AmeriCorps,” Sager said. “She makes me proud. I get choked up when talking about her.”
The students chosen to work with Sager have been identified as “high risk” by finishing with low test scores last fall. “These kids need immediate interaction and I give them the help,” said Sager, who is a 2017 graduate of Owatonna High School.
 “They read to me, I read to them and they read back to me again,” she said. “First you read to learn and then learn to read.”Without providing the extra help, Sager said she knows what would happen. “They would fall behind in all areas of their life,” she said. “This is really changing their lives.”
Principal Josh Carlson introduced the district to the Reading Corps program after seeing it while working as an instructional coach in the Mankato School District prior to coming to Medford five years ago. It was in Mankato where Carlson saw the huge gains students made.
“The goal is to close the achievement gap for all students,” said Carlson. “We want to make sure the students read well by third grade,” he said, adding this particular program sets the tone to meet the goal for all students.
Carlson called Sager “amazing” with the work she has done in a short time. “We can see the impact on a weekly basis,” he said. “It has made a huge impact on the learning of students in K-3.”
There is no cost to the school district as the tutors are paid by AmeriCorps, according to Carlson. He hasn’t noticed that many schools take advantage of the program.
In Minnesota, there are 1,216 tutors mobilized to serve 20,235 students.
Carlson would eventually like to see the program expanded to two tutors to help an additional 15 students.
For Sager, the tutoring she has done has proven to be “very rewarding.” Additional tests are done throughout the school year to chart the progress of the students.
“When I first started, I had my work cut out for me, but they have blown me out of the water with their progress,” said Sager.
She said she hopes to continue in the footsteps of her parents, who are both educators. Her father, Tom, is the director of business with Mankato Public Schools while her mother, Angela, is a social studies teacher at Owatonna High School.
“Education is in my blood,” Sager said. “I love kids, and I love working hands on with people.”
Sager’s ultimate dream is to become an elementary physical education teacher.