Celebrating success is routine procedure for Ginger Murphy.
Part of one wall in her Eisenhower Middle School language arts classroom resembles a beaded door curtain gleaming with magenta, yellow, orange and blue dots that form vertical ribbons sprouting from the top of the display board toward the floor.
Each represents a student’s 70% comprehension rate (or higher) of a book throughout the four quarters of the academic year. Another board honors perfect scores on assignments.
“A lot of it is motivation. I do a lot of acknowledgement of growth and success,” says Murphy, who has taught in the Rockford Public Schools since 2000 and just completed her 15th year at Eisenhower.
Murphy, a double-alumna of the NIU College of Education who followed her mother’s footsteps into the classroom, has devoted 16 years to implementing Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Read 180 program.
The intensive reading intervention strategy, designed for third- through 12th-graders who are reading one or more years below grade level, adapts to each student’s needs to provide the confidence and help needed to achieve grade-level proficiency.
“When they come to me, they sometimes have struggled for so long – and I really need to encourage them to try,” Murphy says. “I spend a lot of time looking at data when the students are in my class and making sure that I’m moving them accordingly in the reading program so that they’re continuously challenged.”
Students in her reading intervention program also “love to look at that data, and they keep track of their progress,” she adds. “Celebrating all the little successes motivates them. They see those tiny steps that they’re making, and then they’re willing to try and work.”
Now Murphy is the one being celebrated.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt recognized Murphy this spring with a Read 180 Educator Award as an outstanding teacher “whose dedication opens new pathways to success” for students who need help developing literacy skills and whose work “inspires students to rise above challenges, both in the classroom and beyond.”
“We are so fortunate to have Mrs. Murphy on our teaching staff,” Eisenhower Principal Ashley Cameron says. “Not only is she a kind and compassionate teacher, she is incredibly talented. Students in Mrs. Murphy’s reading classes consistently make impressive gains as readers.”
For Murphy, who earned her B.S.Ed. in Special Education in 2000 and her M.S.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction in 2003, that goal starts on Day One.
“I make my room like a community. I want it to be a safe place. We spend a lot of time doing team building in my classroom at the beginning of the year so that everybody feels comfortable in taking the risks they need in order to be able to succeed,” says Murphy, who works with sixth- through eighth-graders.
“I work with them in small groups,” she says. “They explore different novels together so that everybody finds their perfect fit. I have a massive library of what they have the option of reading, and I have to make sure I get them all within their zone of proximal development and find what fits their interests – so that’s a little bit of a puzzle at times.”
Meanwhile, she adds, “we do whole group lessons where everybody’s included” along with work on the HMH Read 180 software.
Part of that inclusion takes place outside those lessons – and by design.
“Generally, my classes are blended with all three grade levels together, and I tend to have kids a couple years in a row,” Murphy says, “so I try to use those students who have been with more than one year as mentors for incoming students so that they feel a little pride and not a stigma that they’re still in the class. I try to use them as leaders to help with everything we’re doing and to guide the other students.”
Her teaching philosophy is well honed and grounded in her own academic preparation as well as her decades of experience.
Following six years in classrooms at Rockford’s Lincoln and Flinn middle schools, she combined her B.S.Ed. in Special Education with a reading specialist degree from another university to become an itinerant reading coach serving 12 buildings in the district’s direct instruction program.
“Putting those two degrees together was the perfect match to give me the skills I needed, and so many pieces of that came from my undergraduate program,” Murphy says of that role that preceded her eventual return to the classroom.
“It helped me with knowing how to scaffold my instruction and how to differentiate my instruction,” she adds. “It strengthened me to be able to make decisions on how to move my students around. It helped me with making accommodations and modifications, and with how to control my rotations in my room with behavior management. It helped me with building rapport with my students. It helped me with progress monitoring and data collection.”
What students see as a result is a partner and advocate.
“I love to read,” says Murphy, a fan of dystopian novels and historical fiction, “so I have my own chart where I keep all the books that I read so they can see that I’m reading constantly.”
Then, she adds, “I talk to them all the time about the fact that, ‘Reading is your key to success. For everything that you will do, you need to be able to read, and you need to be able to comprehend what you are reading.’ I am constantly talking to them about how critical that is, and I want them to walk away knowing that they can do it. They can be successful.”
What parents and families see is achievement in their students.
“I just want them prepared for life,” Murphy says, “and that they are at grade-level, or even beyond – because sometimes I get them beyond grade-level, which is fabulous when that happens. And when they get to that exit criterion, it is magic in here. It really is.”
For Murphy, who’s more comfortable with celebrating that level of magic, the national spotlight from Read 180 is “quite overwhelming” but meaningful and appreciated.
“I’m just going to keep doing what I know works for my students. I feel there’s always room for improvement. Everybody can improve,” she says, “and I’ll always change things up as needed, keep myself fresh, go to all my training.”
