Rebecca Hicks

I have a student I will call Sandy. Her TABE scores were level 1.5 and 2.3 in Reading, Language Arts. Sandy is in her 40's and has a son. She said she would love to get her GED and be able to read well enough to help her son with his homework. I thought of Sandy when I began training for Reading Horizons. I came back to the unit and shared the program with my students. Sandy began the computer program in February 2017. It was very difficult for her but she never gave up. About a month into the program she called out to the class "Ya'll come here!" I was surprised, (mainly because we are a state jail facility), but also because Sandy is very quiet. Several of my students and myself went to her computer desk. She began to read from a 3-4 sentence paragraph. When she finished we waited. As a teacher, I looked for either computer or grammar errors and saw none. Sandy turned around, smiled and said, "That was the first paragraph I have ever read!" It makes me tear up just typing this. Sandy completed the program August 11, 2017. She was so proud!

I also would like to share my testing results for June 2017. I started the RH program in February 2017. I knew right away that I would see results as far as testing data but never dreamed it would be so soon. We tested in April and again in June. I had 25 students in June, who had been in the program for 3-5 months. I was hoping to see growth in 30-50 percent of my students. I was pleasantly surprised to see 84 percent growth!

Grade Level: Adult Ed