Fort Wort has a reading problem. This retired teacher is doing her part to help

Reading is the buzzword of 2025 in the Fort Worth school district, with good reason. After years of students struggling to read at grade level, district, city and county officials have doubled down on improving literacy, with Tarrant County commissioners even calling it a critical piece of the puzzle in reducing crime and poverty.

Most would agree that helping students improve reading and comprehension skills is a good thing, but what exactly does it look like?

At Westpark Elementary School, at 10202 Jerry Dunn Parkway in Benbrook, it looks like a petite retired teacher named Martha Farr.

On a Thursday morning in September, Farr sat in a tiny chair at a small table with two second-graders. In front of her was a set of laminated flash cards with letters of the alphabet and corresponding pictures — the “Action Alphabet” — one of Farr’s own creations that she used for 40 years in her kindergarten classrooms in the Birdville school district.

The letter A is accompanied by a hand-drawn depiction of a person sneezing — Ah-choo! — and also the picture of an angel, to remind students that those powerhouse vowels are capable of more than one sound.

With an encouraging tone and saintly patience, Farr led her students through the Action Alphabet, the idea being to help them break down unfamiliar words into parts and sound them out.

It’s a remarkably simple yet effective method for strengthening reading skills. Over her decades as a kindergarten teacher, Farr learned that the best literacy improvement strategies were the ones that focused on the basics, things like phonemic awareness, and relied on repetition.

While teaching early childhood education courses at Dallas Baptist University, Farr instilled that in her college students to carry into their own classrooms. Focusing on simplicity is particularly important with struggling readers, Farr said.

“You don’t want to let that spirit of failure start. Kids know if they’re not getting it, and everyone else in class is.”

At Westpark, Farr works with kindergarten through second grade students who aren’t yet reading at grade level, as determined by beginning-of-the-year diagnostic exams. Farr sees her students twice a week in small groups throughout the day, with each student receiving about 20 minutes of intervention per session.

It keeps Farr busy, but she clearly enjoys it. For a while, Farr said, she was happily retired. But after her husband unexpectedly passed, she found the life of leisure monotonous. She needed a reason to get up in the morning, and service through teaching has always come naturally to her.

“God gives each of us gifts,” said Farr. “When you are using your gifts and making sure you’re serving the people in your sphere of influence, it’s not a job.”

Now, two days a week, Farr leaves the comfort of the Stevenson Oaks retirement community in southwest Fort Worth and heads back to school.

Glorianne Mason, the principal at Westpark, said Farr “checked off all the boxes” when they were looking for a reading interventionist. A lot of that came down to Farr’s extensive experience, of course, but Mason said it also came down to Farr’s energy and passion for what she does.

“She’s the perfect person to come in and step up the foundation for our littles,” said Mason.

About the only thing Farr would change about her new job, if she could, is the amount of time she gets with her students. Forty minutes a week isn’t much, but Farr said the students’ schedules don’t allow for more beyond that. Still, she said, every little bit counts, and every minute of additional reading support will benefit her kids down the road.

That’s something Farr wants parents to understand, too. She realizes their schedules are just as jam packed as their students’ are, but even spending 15 to 20 minutes a day reading to your children can have a huge impact.

Larger efforts across Fort Worth schools to improve literacy

When asked if all Fort Worth schools have a Martha Farr on staff to support struggling readers, a school district spokesperson said it looks different at each campus.

A report from last November showed that nearly three quarters of Fort Worth students in grades 3-8 struggled to read at grade level.

Over the summer, the city of Fort Worth partnered with the Sid W. Richardson Foundation and the Go Beyond Grades campaign to screen Fort Worth schoolchildren for dyslexia to help address reading gaps.

The school district also recently adopted a new training program to help teachers support students with dyslexia.

Beginning this school year, Fort Worth students in grades 3-8 are using a Bluebonnet Learning phonics program that school district officials said will offer “a cohesive, efficient model that supports earlier student application of phonics skills aligned to the science of reading.”

While she didn’t weigh in specifically on these initiatives, Farr spoke highly of phonic-based curriculum in general, and she said diagnosing learning differences, like dyslexia, is critical in teaching students to read and keeping them motivated.

Along with simplicity, Farr’s teaching philosophy leans heavily on adaptability to meet kids where they are when it comes to literacy. While not every student will have a challenge like dyslexia, said Farr, every student learns differently, and educators must keep that in mind when developing teaching strategies.

Mason said the goal at Westpark is for each student to show progress. They arrive in August for a new school year, and nine months later, if all goes right, they’ll have taken a step forward.

The potential size of that step is different for each child, but Farr is determined that none of hers will stand still or, worse, go backward. She believes she was put on this earth to guide youngsters, and if you ever observed her in the classroom, you’d likely believe that, too.

As she walked her second-graders through the Action Alphabet, Farr regularly paused to shower the students with praise.

“You’re so smart!” she exclaimed after one correctly read what was on the flash card. “Give your brain a kiss,” she told the other after a right answer.

When they finished memorizing phonetic sounds, Farr led the children in a song. All three seemed proud of the progress they’d made on that particular Thursday.

Farr could just as easily be home at Stevenson Oaks, where meals are prepared for her and she has a full social calendar. She clocked 40 years in a kindergarten classroom, after all, so who would blame her for kicking back?

But Farr doubts she’d be content. These days she works not to pay the bills or prove herself; these days, Farr works because there’s work to be done.

Star-Telegram staff writers Kamal Morgan, Silas Allen and Lina Ruiz contributed to this report.