Bridgewater Students And Teachers Recognized For Literacy Clinic

On Monday, June 2nd, 69 students and 42 teachers from Bridgewater-Raritan School were recognized for their hard work in the Bridgewater-Raritan Literacy Clinic this year. Donna Zaborowski, the Director of the B-R Literacy Clinic, facilitated the evening. 

The cafeteria at Milltown School was filled with proud parents and siblings to help in the celebration. 

Teachers in grades K-6 were given the opportunity to enroll in this 4 district credit course back in September. Teachers who take this course provide literacy support to one, two or three of their students outside of the school day (either before school or after school) in order to help them strengthen and build upon their literacy skills.  

In addition to those 30 hours, teachers must also attend 8 one hour monthly meetings and the evening celebration.  During the meetings, the teachers have the opportunity to share literacy techniques and ideas, ask for feedback from others, and get into small groups to create mini case studies of students.  Teachers are also required to assess their student, analyze the data and write up a report.  

The report includes the student’s strengths and weaknesses and focus of instruction. The participating teachers must also complete an exit report as well. 

Each of the participating children were recognized and presented with certificates. A slide show with music was presented to capture the students and teachers during their time together. At the end of the evening refreshments provided by the participating teachers were served.

“The students who participate in the B-R Clinic gain so much!  Reading over the end of year reports and seeing how far the children have come is the reason why I started this clinic,” commented Donna Zaborowski.  

“This is the sixth year of the B-R Literacy Clinic.  It has grown so much since the first year! We started off just being at the elementary level and now we also service intermediate grades. This year teachers from Adamsville, Crim, Eisenhower, Hamilton, Hillside, JFK, Milltown, and Van Holten participated. They get to work in an extremely small group setting and get targeted literacy instruction. A Math Clinic modeled after this class was started up last year after one of the participating teachers decided to do the same thing except focus on math skills. It is an amazing opportunity for our at-risk literacy learners. I feel truly blessed to work in a school district where the administration supports this.”