Stritch's Literacy Centers Opening Two New Sites

We are pleased to announce that in early March, 's Literacy Centers, which provide comprehensive literacy assessment and intervention services for K-12 students, began operating at two new sites in Milwaukee, joining the three existing locations on Stritch’s main campus, at its City Center location in downtown Milwaukee, and at Townsend Street School in the city’s Sherman Park neighborhood.

The first of the two new centers, like Townsend, is in a Milwaukee Public School – at Lincoln Center for the Arts (LCA) on Milwaukee’s lower east side. The second new center is in the Greentree/Teutonia Community Learning Center on the city’s north side.

Between 60-70 students are expected to be served at LCA, which has a large concentration of English language learners. Although scheduling is ongoing, the LCA site is operating before, during, and/or after school hours and provides the following services, which began in phases:

• One-on-one tutoring for students with the most significant literacy needs
• Small group tutoring for students with improving, but still fragile literacy needs
• Guided book clubs and writing circles for small groups of interested students
• Professional development for teachers
• Offerings to equip families with strategies to support reading and language difficulties
• Literacy Centers staff and the faculty at LCA have formed a literacy advisory board and are determining student participation criteria for intense literacy support and the sequence and nature of further literacy phases at the school.

The second new site at the Greentree/Teutonia Community Learning Center opened following a process similar to the opening of the LCA site. Stritch also operates its Lifetime Learners program for working adults at this location.

Though the centers had long planned to add additional sites, this opportunity came about following the announcement that Stritch would partner with Milwaukee Public Schools and other community organizations to help implement its $30 million federally-funded GEAR UP college preparation program, announced in late 2011.

“The GEAR UP grant has provided us with an exciting opportunity to work closely with the staff, MPS and families at Lincoln to custom design a literacy center that will serve a wide range of the specific opportunities and change students’ educational trajectories, making education dreams a reality for them,” said Dr. Molly Shiffler, director of the Literacy Centers.

Since expanding from Stritch’s main campus to two additional urban sites in fall 2007, the centers have experienced a 200% growth in the number of students served annually, from approximately 100 students to more than 300 today. Along with donations from the Elizabeth Brinn Foundation and the Baumgartner family, a $250,000 Wisconsin Teacher Quality grant served as the genesis of the centers, which is an outgrowth of the Reading Clinic started by the Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi in 1943. Due to the success and growth of the program, that initial grant was renewed through 2012 with another $250,000.