Stair Steps Up To Help Birmingham City Schools

By Allison Swagler-Webb

School may be out for the day, but one classroom at Oliver Elementary is still packed. Fourteen second-grade students sit in two rows of chairs. Along the back walls sit parents, grandparents, siblings and another support group: reading mentors for each student.

When the site director for the after-school program calls students up to the front of the class, their personal reading mentors stand next to them. As the regular school year ends, this class of students is also graduating from a year-long reading program.

Oliver Elementary is one of 13 sites where the Start The Adventure In Reading (STAIR) program operated during the 2017-2018 school year. STAIR partnered with 13 Birmingham City Schools and served 200 students across the Birmingham community. An after-school reading program, STAIR works with second-grade students who are reading below their grade level, offering one-on-one tutoring to help them develop their literacy skills.As STAIR’s executive director, Liz Edwards knows the importance of their work. “For students to be able to graduate on time, one of the key predictors is reading on grade level by end of third grade,” Edwards said. “Up until the third grade, students are learning to read, but from third grade on they’re expected to be able to read to learn. For students who aren’t reading at grade level, they just fall further and further behind.”

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