Instructor Spotlight: Sasha Garcia
Congratulations to the first 2018-2019 Instructor of the Month SASHA GARCIA!
Sasha is a paraprofessional at P.S. 106 in Brooklyn in her third year as a Reading Rescue instructor. This year, Sasha is a small group instructor as part of our small group instruction pilot...more information on that to come in our newsletter next week!
We visited Sasha at her school to learn about her work as a para, a Reading Rescue instructor, and substitute program coordinator:
Sasha has worked in her school building for 13 years; first as a volunteer, then as an activity and after school specialist, and has now been a paraprofessional for almost six years. For the past two school years, Sasha has worked with four different students doing daily one-on-one Reading Rescue lessons. Like many paraprofessionals, Sasha has always pulled small groups when she has time to help them with foundational reading skills. Additionally, she works with after school students to help get them up to speed in their classrooms, typically with first grade English Language Learner (ELL) students. It occurred to her that using Reading Rescue materials and some parts of the lesson - even if she was only working with each student twice a week - would help these students immensely. Sasha is an incredible example of the ripple effect of Reading Rescue professional development: her expertise doesn’t just benefit Reading Rescue students, but all students she spends time working with. As a result of this literacy leadership during and after school, her program coordinator and school team decided she’d be a perfect fit to lead the small group pilot at P.S. 106.
“As a kid I actually loved to read. Back then there weren’t computers so my grandmother made sure I read everyday even in the summer before I went out to play.”
Sasha remembers when she developed a deep empathy for ELL students and knew she wanted to do what she could to support their learning. In a Literacy Trust Reading Rescue professional development, the group did an activity where they had to avoid saying words that start with the letter S, and then compared how tiring that was to word-finding as an ELL student. It dawned on Sasha: “This is a lot harder for them than I thought.” This inspired Sasha to take a few ELL students after school so they get Reading Rescue-inspired instruction in small groups as well as classroom instruction.
“I enjoy reading! It makes you forget about all the issues you have and you get to lose yourself in a character.”
Sasha knows how important consistency is in this intervention. While their program coordinator is out on medical leave, she has stepped up to fill in and work with the program coordinator’s student as well as Sasha’s own group.
After school Sasha also runs Girls Club for a group of students, using a service learning model. Their first event was this December. Sasha and the girls planned a dads vs staff basketball game to raise awareness about what men can do to combat domestic violence. Entry to the game cost one supply to be donated to a shelter, and Sasha and the girls were proud to report that the donation box was full at the end of the game. It is important to Sasha to give back to her community, and she aims to instill this same value in her students.
Sasha is also the mother of a ten year old daughter and a five year old son. “I use the magnetic letters to help my five year-old son tap out words. I also do something similar to the writing book with him for fun. He gets to write a word he knows and draws a picture next to it so that I know he understands what he wrote.”
Congrats to Sasha Garcia - paraprofessional, substitute program coordinator, UFT representative, Girls Club leader, and Reading Rescue instructor extraordinaire!