About Reading Quest
This non-profit is an expansion of the student - led literacy campaign, Hooked on Books and the NM Alliance for Literacy (http://nmallianceforliteracy.org/), created by Santa Fe middle school students, their teachers at Santa Fe School for the Arts & Sciences and local high school students in 2012.
Hooked on Books students helped create the ‘Reading is Magic’ Summer Program which trains and hires teens and master reading specialists for intensive summer reading programs for students who are 1-2 years below grade level in reading. During the past seven summers, our campers have made, on average, slightly more than one year's growth during each two week camp session, as measured by a standardized reading assessment, The Oral Reading Test. Young children are particularly motivated when teenagers are reading with them and encouraging them to persevere and work hard. We train teen tutors using multi-sensory hands-on, phonics-based strategies for our Reading Quest Tutoring Center, community service outreach, and Reading is Magic work opportunities. We collaborate with the Mother Tongue and GRADS Teen Parent programs at Capital and Santa Fe High Schoolswhere we train young parents in early literacy practices such as, read aloud, rhyming and phonemic awareness. Several teen parents have now completed the first two parts of our Tutor Training program. We also tutor low-income and homeless students in coordination with Communities in Schools, Adelante and PMS programs, in addition to providing free training for their volunteer tutors. |
Teacher & Parent Testimonials
Reading Quest has helped struggling readers at Kearny to develop fluency, phonemic awareness, solid comprehension skills, and confidence in reading. Students enjoy and look forward to fun, engaging, and rigorous literacy sessions with committed tutors.
Rayna Dineen has trained and coached our teachers on Positive Behavior Management. She has also worked with students and groups of students in need of extra behavioral support and/ or mediation. Her influence on our school culture in these areas has been to infuse it with more compassion and wisdom and to offer supportive, long-lasting, and restorative approaches to challenging student behaviors.
-Stephanie Hubley, Principal
Rayna Dineen has trained and coached our teachers on Positive Behavior Management. She has also worked with students and groups of students in need of extra behavioral support and/ or mediation. Her influence on our school culture in these areas has been to infuse it with more compassion and wisdom and to offer supportive, long-lasting, and restorative approaches to challenging student behaviors.
-Stephanie Hubley, Principal
Reading Quest Board of Directors
Connor Browne Rosie Bustillos Jean Hinlicky Hal Malchow Craig Olsen Dr. Elise Packard Alicia Vadillo-Romero Nick Venditti Connor Browne Connor Browne is a Portfolio Manager and Managing Director at Thornburg Investment Management. Connor moved to Santa Fe and began his career at Thornburg in 2001. Connor has supported many non-profit organizations in town, especially Big Brothers Big Sisters Mountain Region, where he volunteered as a big brother and served on the board, most recently as Board President. Connor and his wife, Christina, are particularly focused on helping to create better opportunities for at-risk youth in Santa Fe and the surrounding areas. Rosie Bustillos Reading is Magic made all the difference for my son, when he was a 3rd grader struggling to reach a 1st grade reading level. My first language was Spanish and I struggled to provide him with the help he needed. He is now a 6th grader. He reads at grade level-- and he loves to read. Professionally, I am a registered nurse. I graduated with an Associate's degree in Nursing from Santa Fe Community College in 2009 and obtained my Bachelors of Science in Nursing at the University of New Mexico in 2013. I worked in Family Medicine at La Familia Medical Center here in Santa Fe and in intensive trauma/surgical/burn care as well as on the Wound and Ostomy Care Team at UNM Hospital. For the last two years I have been working for Christus St. Vincent Hospital as a wound care and ostomy nurse. I was fortunate to be selected to volunteer as a Wound and Burn care nurse in Nicaragua in 2015. I have been a volunteer with Reading is Magic and Reading Quest since 2014. I serve as a Spanish interpreter and translator for our Spanish-speaking families. It is my honor to give back to the program which has given so much to my son. Jean Hinlicky, M.D. Jean received her M.D. from the University of Rochester School of Medicine, then completed residency training in pediatrics and a two-year fellowship in child psychiatry/behavioral pediatrics at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. During that time, she worked extensively at Kennedy Krieger Institute, a Hopkins-affiliated clinic/hospital devoted to children with multiple developmental challenges including trouble with reading. Jean’s 30 year solo private practice in Baltimore focused on multi-modality treatment of children with various types of school-learning challenges, and she worked intimately with schools in that capacity. Jean worked for ten years at the Kennedy Institute School and in the Baltimore County public schools as psychiatric consultant, and served on Kennedy’s multidisciplinary assessment team which focused on evaluation and treatment of children with diverse types of problems in school. Jean feels that her childhood love of reading paved the wave for her future work, but more importantly also provided an outlet and a special solace in childhood. Her hope is to impart that love and skill set to as many children as possible. After additional training in reading education, Jean signed on as a volunteer tutor with Reading Quest early in 2018, and is loving working with the children who attend Reading Quest and the Reading is Magic summer program. Hal Malchow Hal Malchow recently moved to Santa Fe from Washington, DC where he was a political consultant and fundraiser for 30 years. He was active in reading issues as President of the International Dyslexia Association and President of the Coalition for Reading Excellence, an alliance of forty literacy groups working to expand and improve the use of phonics-based reading instruction. Craig Olson Craig Olson’s career began as a Graphic Designer then moved into Brand Strategy and Account Management in the advertising industry. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in Commercial Design, Craig changed careers into Interior Architecture later moving to Santa Fe. Craig has held board positions with the Illinois Interior Design Coalition, The Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art (Auxiliary) and his Chicago Homeowners Association. Both Craig and his wife Martha are involved in helping to protect children’s rights and increasing their opportunities in the Santa Fe community. Elise Packard, Ph.D. Elise is an independent consultant who has worked with Image theory for over 30 years in the development of programs both internationally as well as in the United States. These programs have been focused on the development of teachers, as well as facilitators and consultants. She has done extensive facilitation, consultation and training with not-for- profit, for profit and government agencies. Elise has led a team to develop cultural revitalization and family literacy programs in indigenous communities in New Mexico and Canada, working also with Head Start and Early Head Start grantees in Illinois, California, New Mexico and Colorado. Most recently she has worked with Save the Children in Rwanda. She is a founding member of the Interfaith Coalition for Public Education in Santa Fe, working to engage voters and taxpayers in projects that strengthen public education from birth to career. Her doctoral degree is in Cognitive Psychology, with a focus on adult learning and infant development. Alicia Vadillo-Romero Alicia Vadillo-Romero is a bilingual educational diagnostician in Santa Fe. She arrived in to New Mexico 11 years ago. Since then, she has earned a masters degree in curriculum and instruction with an emphasis in TESOL from New Mexico Highlands University. Alicia was recently licensed as an educational diagnostician by the University of the Southwest. She has extensive experience in early childhood, bilingual, and special education for more than 15 years in both Mexico and the US. When she has free time, Alicia enjoys walking with friends, talking about her daughter, and studying astrology. Alicia currently works for SFPS and is a board member for Reading Quest. Nick Venditti Nick Venditti is a Portfolio Manager and Managing Director at Thornburg Investment Management. Nick works in municipal finance and spends a great deal of time analyzing schools, both public and private, at the primary, secondary and post-secondary levels. Nick’s interests lie in measuring and determining educational outcomes versus the cost to attain those outcomes. Nick and his wife Carlie are strong believers in education as the panacea for most social ills and are particularly focused on improving educational outcomes for children in and around Santa Fe. Rayna Dineen, Reading Quest Executive Director
Rayna has worked in education for over 38 years. She received two master’s degrees from Teachers College, Columbia University, in addition to doctoral work at Colorado State University. Rayna has taught students from preschool to grade 12 and is passionate about literacy, joyful project based learning, inclusive practices, positive classroom management and service learning. She co-directed the Cariño Community Children’s program for Santa Fe Public Schools and taught children with special needs at New Vistas. She founded an EL Education prek-8 school in Santa Fe, NM (Santa Fe School for the Arts & Sciences) where she served as teacher and principal for 13 years. Rayna has also worked as an EL Education School Consultant serving Santa Fe Public Schools and schools in Australia, India, New Mexico, Arizona, West Virginia, Utah, Idaho and Colorado. She facilitates national education institutes and works with experiential education organizations both here and overseas. She also consulted for Discover Learning, a Gates Foundation collaboration between Save the Children and UC Berkeley which supports a project based learning program for children ages 10-11 in Tanzania. She has consulted for Harlem Village Academies and two schools in India, Polymath School and Heritage Xperiential Learning School. She founded Hooked on Books and Reading is Magic in 2012 and began Reading Quest in 2015. She believes in the power of young people to change our world and loves supporting children as they discover the joy of reading. |