Words in the Wild develops well-trained tutors through the Teaching Fellowship and delivers high-impact tutoring. 

The effects of high-impact tutoring can’t be overstated. Not only does it accelerate learning and help students catch up to grade-level peers, but it also increases attendance rates (2), and works at a large-scale (3). 

Quick aside: What’s high impact tutoring? (4)

Tutoring that takes place in small groups, 3+ times a week for 10+ consecutive weeks, with a well-trained tutor during the school day and aligns with the school’s curriculum. 

Two hitches: tutors need to be well-trained, and it costs money to train people. Which leads up to the second way Words in Wild’s Teaching Fellowship helps. 

Words in the Wild creates a tutor-to-teacher pipeline through the Teaching Fellowship.

Unfortunately, giving every struggling reader a well-trained tutor isn’t sustainable. We need classroom teachers equipped to deliver high-quality literacy instruction.

Enter the tutor-to-teacher pipeline. Here’s how it works: 

1. Tutors receive specialized training for literacy, learn to apply data-informed decisions, and deliver responsive instruction for each student while building experience instructing an array of complex learners. 

2. Students reach ambitions learning goals (every hour of tutoring results in significant increases in both reading and writing skills). 

3. Repeat. After hundreds of hours tutoring, these professional are well-equipped to confidently enter the classroom, filling the gaps that have been created by decades of teacher shortages.

Training in which teachers have the opportunity to apply their learned knowledge and skills under expert guidance produced the largest growth in teacher knowledge.(6)

“We need research-based reading curriculum. We need to use these curriculums in middle and high school to get kids moving, not just ignore it in the name of teaching grade-level standards that kids aren’t going to get anyway.” — Tessa McAleer, teacher, STRIVE Prep — Lake campus, Denver, Colorado (9)

Words in the Wild offers an interdisciplinary approach to literacy, supercharged by Teaching Fellows. 

Our tutoring focuses on evidence-based instruction that removes stigma and repairs kids’ relationships with reading and learning. And we frame literacy through the world of science, nature, and community. 

The impact of this goes beyond improving reading level. Extremely absent students increase attendance by 2.8 days when tutoring is a regular part of their classroom experience and students earn higher grades in other courses, too. (10) (11)