Margo Sievers

Nurturing a Love of Reading in her Students

Margo Sievers (BA ’72) has two secrets to helping children learn to read. First, teach them to love it. “If the child gets an idea that reading is hard, that it’s all about testing and it’s not actually being submersed in good books, I think they shy away from reading,” she said.

Second, intersperse reading throughout the school day and across subject lines. “Kids need to learn that reading is not in isolation,” Sievers said. “When I was a kid, you had reading for an hour and then you stopped and put your book away and then you had math. I think we’re doing a better job now of tying everything together so kids understand the importance of everything being blended together. That’s how you live rather than subjects in isolation.”

Sievers, who has more than 30 years of experience teaching elementary school in Sioux Rapids, Iowa, has found success with her methods. She recently earned the Iowa Reading Association’s Teacher of the Year Award and the Quint County Reading Association’s Teacher of the Year Award. Her class has also consistently won the Buena Vista Environmental Awareness Award several years in a row.

The fact that she’s garnering attention for her reading and science teaching is no surprise. A master gardener, Sievers often incorporates plants into her teaching. And when her second grade class is learning about harvesting in the fall, dormancy in the winter, or environmental awareness in the spring, she picks books that bring those subjects to life.

“We try to pick books intentionally, so the kids are always getting a little taste of science and social studies in with their reading class,” she said. “We read and read and read and read.” On Dr. Seuss’s birthday in March, she incorporates art into reading class. “I want to be sure the kids understand that these are careers,” she said. “Getting kids sold on being an author or an artist is another really important part of literacy.”

Sievers said it’s also essential that reading continue at home, despite all of the distractions parents face. “They have more choices to make with their children than I seem to remember with mine. Although there are video games and all that, I still see parents sitting down and reading with children,” she said. Sievers said it’s especially gratifying to see her students have “loving, caring” parents who read to them at home when those parents were once her students as well. Kirt Patten was in Sievers’ class as a third grader 27 years ago.

“I remember that she liked to have fun in her class. So you were learning, but you were having fun doing it,” he said. Now Patten’s son Brandon is in Sievers’ second grade class. And he loves Sievers as much as his dad did—especially when she reads to the class. “It’s like she’s a character in the book,” Patten said. Sievers doesn’t stop teaching when the school day is over.

She leads a dual-language program for parents after school that teaches Spanish-speaking parents how to speak English and English-speaking parents how to speak Spanish.  When school’s out for the summer, Sievers tours Iowa with stops at an average of 15 libraries each year where she leads a summer reading program for Iowa students. “Teaching and children have been my whole life,” Sievers said. “I want to make things better for kids, and make this a better place in which we all live.”