Image: New Mexico Highlands University President Neil Woolf meets with 9-year-old Arianna Martinez of Las Vegas during the school’s new summer reading literacy program.
One of New Mexico Highlands University President Neil Woolf’s goals is to expand the community presence of the school and this week he got a first-hand glimpse of just that, visiting a new, state-funded reading literacy program for elementary students.
“The importance of these programs is that it allows students in elementary school and their parents to realize that one, reading is important for our development,” Woolf said. “And this continues to be important for throughout our adult lives. But two, it’s important to have these at Highlands because it shares with the kids and the families that Highlands is an accessible institution of higher education for them. That college is affordable, it’s accessible, they get to kind of get a feel of the place and become familiar with it. So we view this as a very important outreach effort to parents and their children.”
While this is a statewide effort, he said this is just the beginning of an increased effort to reach out to younger students.
“One of my backgrounds is expanding the outreach of higher education to include the local communities, and with elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, to let people know that we’re here for them,” Woolf said.
Dr. Arsenio Romero, Secretary of the New Mexico Public Education Department, joined Woolf in visiting the classrooms to meet the students and teachers.
“New Mexico has been investing in literacy for a number of years now through structured literacy in the science of reading and this is our next step in that endeavor,” he said. “This has been a great example of how we’re seeing New Mexico really taking the lead when it comes to structured literacy in the science of reading, with the end goal to be able to create a New Mexico Literacy Institute.”
Over the course of the summer, the program is already producing tangible results, said Highlands professor Lorraine Martinez, site coordinator for the literacy program.
“What I’ve seen is this has given children a lot more confidence in reading,” she said. “A lot of them, their parents told me that they were going to be retained. And it was because of what they couldn’t do. They couldn’t excel in reading. Because of this program, we’ve seen with our graphs that we have, the growth of children for pre- and post-testing, because it’s a rigid program. It’s just phonics and sounds and vowels and consonants and reading and writing. I’m not sure about the other programs statewide, but it’s been very successful.”
Those are the results the state is seeking, Romero said.
“It’s just been amazing to see these kids come in and really be able to support their competence and their confidence and reading,” he said. “Now, we’re already starting to see some gains, which is great. We’re also going to be doing long-term studies that will follow these students over the next three years so we can see how this supports them. It’s been such a success this summer that our goal was to be able to continue it in the fall and in the spring. And then of course, we’ll have it every single summer. So it’s been nothing but great things for communities and for students. It’s great.”
And for Woolf and New Mexico Highlands, it tracks with the mission he has set out to continue.
“The stigma of college; of how hard it can be kind of goes away because we feel that it is pretty accessible, and not too difficult so the more of these we can do, the better,” he said. “I think developing these critical thinking skills, learning to learn the meaning of texts and to think through it is just important in how we develop as humans.”