AIM in the News

On Tuesday, May 23, AIM Upper School students celebrated their studies of William Shakespeare with the school's second annual Shakespeare Fest.

Each spring, AIM students read and perform Shakespeare plays and learn about the Bard's incredible contributions to our language and world. The work culminates Shakespeare's birthday with Shakespeare Fest.

This year both NBC10 and 6ABC featured video from this immersive learning event on the evening news.

Curious how AIM Pathways training supports secondary educators with classroom instruction? At the Everyone Reading conference in New York City in January, Dian Frankson, a teacher at Brownsville Collaborative Middle School for Agriculture & Technology, shared some of the resources and tools she learned during her training through New York City's District 23 literacy training and described the transformation she has seen in her student learners.

AIM Pathways partner Lingelbach Elementary School was recently featured in an article, "Here’s how this Philly elementary school moved from bare-bones budget to statewide star," in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The article celebrates the School District of Philadelphia school's transformation and "reading pivot" which has led to strong gains on literacy assessments for 3rd graders. According to the article, the percentage of third graders passing state English exams jumped a stellar 173%, from 26% to 71%.

The Philadelphia Inquirer recently featured a story about pending legislation in Pennsylvania that would set curricula requirements and mandate reading competency screenings for K-3 students three times a year.

The article, "Pa. could become the latest state to mandate ‘evidence-based’ reading instruction," includes an interview with Megan Gierka, senior content developer at AIM Institute explaining the need for evidence-based reading instruction.

The literacy learning journey of several AIM families were featured in a recent comprehensive article about reading instruction in Philadelphia-area classrooms in The Philadelphia Inquirer. The article, "A battle over how to teach kids to read is playing out in Philly-area classrooms. Parents are losing trust," was published online on February 21 and featured in the Sunday newspaper on February 25. The article focuses on the importance of structured literacy instruction to support readers, especially students with language-based learning differences like dyslexia and dysgraphia like those served at AIM Academy.

The Rhode Island Department of Education recently highlighted the success of Richmond Elementary School, an AIM Pathways partner, as a RICAS Rockstar for their students' 13% gain on the state ELA assessment. The video includes the Chariho School District superintendent, Richmond's principal, and teachers sharing the impact that AIM's comprehensive science of reading training has had on their teachers' work implementing high-quality instructional materials in their classrooms.

“Coming out of COVID we adopted [a HQM] program and at the time our teachers, including myself, had not been trained in the science of reading," Principal Sharon Martin shared in the video. "By the second year of implementation of the program, the teachers began their AIM Pathways Science of Reading training. Things started to make sense. We could start to understand the rationale behind the changes.”