By Jillian Geraghty
It’s the beginning of a new school year, and I’m thinking back to the summer of 2017. I had walked into a brand new school, grade, and community. Upon entering my classroom, I was handed three texts and told, “These are the books we read, just connect them to the standards. You gotta sink or swim.”
It soon became obvious that I was sinking with one of my students, Nico. I was working with him using cueing systems that guided students to look around the word for answers. Nico began reading to me from a book about a neighborhood getting a new carousel filled with ponies. He read:
“I hop the ponds,” said Ben. “I hop air wit ponds.”
When it came time to recall what he had read, Nico simply looked at me and said, “What is with these ponds?”
Nico had been in our school for years, was almost nine, and could not read. I knew that students who were not reading at grade level by fourth grade were four times more likely to drop out of high school. Nico could not read a first grade text. Something was missing, yet my grade-level standards didn’t explain this.
Nico was not alone. Just four out of ten fourth graders in Massachusetts could read proficiently. I began researching theories and practice, participated in graduate courses focused on struggling readers, and collaborated with colleagues to analyze data and chart student success.
I did all of this in vacuum, because the materials I had did not focus on building reading skills for students like Nico. Fortunately, my principal saw my passion for this work and created a coaching position for me where I could use my learning.
To put it another way, we invested in the implementation of best practices when it came to literacy.
This spring, Massachusetts passed the Right to Read law, which requires that districts implement an evidence-based curriculum that includes all five parts of the Science of Reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. In addition to these high-quality materials (known as HQIM), our department of education must provide support in training K-3 teachers, paraprofessionals, and reading specialists.
There is a parallel between this statewide law and what happened at my school. Now is the time to create the conditions for teachers across the Commonwealth to begin to swim.
In my coaching role, my sole purpose is to support our teachers’ learning and their implementation of effective curriculum, a powerful bridge between state standards and daily classroom instruction. With the help of a coaching position, teacher training and support, and HQIM, our school grew from the 4th to the 41st percentile in five years.
Now that the Right to Read act is law, the state must step up and do what our school did: Ensure that all educators have access to professional development and ongoing feedback.
In my practice, we utilize a backwards-design approach: Identify where a student like Nico needs to go, determine how the curriculum can guide us there, and pinpoint what all of our students need for us to do for them to thrive as readers. We also make sure that support lasts beyond a one-time session and is content-specific and ongoing. As a team, we continue to reflect on our students’ goals and make adjustments in real time.
Massachusetts must ensure that educators can implement new practices effectively. Our students deserve the most effective instruction, and educators deserve the opportunities to continue to develop their craft through supportive learning experiences.
Jillian Geraghty is a literacy instructional facilitator at the John F. Kennedy School in Boston and a 2026-27 Teach Plus Massachusetts senior policy fellow.
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