Margaret Policastro: Story activist, RU professor

The path to Margaret Policastro's office runs through a maze-like room full of miniature tables and chairs. With 10 shelves of children's reading books lining the wall beside her computer and chair, her workspace looks like a combination of a children's bookstore and an academic office. Her job description, posted on a sign outside her office reads: "Program director, Language and Literacy."

In this room, adjacent to her office, magic happens as special education and gifted children alike are challenged in their reading skills during Roosevelt University's "R U Reading" summer program. The R U Reading summer program is crafted to provide a practicum for graduate students in the language and literacy program to practice their teaching skills.

"I consider myself a story activist," says Policastro."Our lives revolve around stories: reading them, writing them, telling them."

Policastro's trademark is a shiny diamond-like brooch that spells "READ" attached to whatever she is wearing.

"It's my signature, I don't go far without it," she says.

This summer 19 graduate students were assigned to teach 30 children eager to be challenged in their reading skills.

It's 10:30 a.m. on a Monday morning. Tables are grouped together into "learning stations" in a Schaumburg campus classroom. Station No. 1 has random words written on cards and interspersed with corresponding pictures to be matched with one another. Station No. 2 is an art and craft table ready for students to create a flyer.

In a room down the hall a graduate students shows five students a list of words and tells them: "If you can read it, read it with a whisper and quiet voice."

"BIG!" The kids loudly proclaim, ignoring her creative suggestion.

Policastro's daily jobs vary according to the needs of the program. During the course of a day, she remains accessible in classrooms and hallways to the graduate students from 8 a.m. to noon.

While walking from a classroom back to her office, a parent volunteering for the week stops her midway to ask about the schedule printout for the parents.

Two steps later she addresses a passing child by name and asks her about her day.

Five steps later a graduate student asks her a question.

When she finally reaches her office 10 minutes later, she greets Cindy Cardiff, a potential graduate student, for academic advising.

Policastro's job is not confined to a limited number of hours, nor is her mission communicated only within the vicinity of her classroom.

"My whole life has revolved around my work," she says.

Policastro's friends are her co-workers; her office is her second home. Policastro's co-worker, Diane Mazeski, began her career of overseeing the R U Reading summer clinic before the program was formally founded.

"I was one of Margaret's students 24 years ago. I was in the reading program at Roosevelt. At that time there was no summer reading clinic," she says.

Since then Mazeski and Policastro have worked together during the summers to establish and expand the program.

"Even though she's younger than I am I definitely feel she's a mentor to me," Mazeski says of Policastro.

Kelly Ortiz, a graduate student currently enrolled in the Roosevelt Literacy program, also began her career as an undergraduate student in Policastro's classroom.

"Margaret made me feel confident in my capabilities as a reading teacher," she says, "I'm now teaching 5th grade and hope to teach reading strategies."

Although Policastro has to travel miles to get to her office every day from the city, it's the students that motivate her to make the commute worthwhile.

"The commute makes me grumpy," she says, "but I like my morning cup of coffee. I like my students. I like being surrounded by over 3,000 books in my room."

Policastro's career began when she was 18 and attended Indiana University as an undergraduate. The course that intrigued her most was a reading methods course.

"There was something about that professor that took me in. I knew I wanted to be a reading professor," she says.

She eventually completed her master's degree at Indiana University and her Ph.D at Northwestern. Since 1979 she has pioneered the reading and literacy instruction program at Roosevelt University's College of Education, inspiring other graduate students.

According to Policastro, Roosevelt's underlying philosophy of "enlightening the human spirit" through education directly corresponds with the program's goal.

"When kids can't read or write, they have no spirit...I work on developing the spirit of my students." She says, "So when you tie it together, I have a pretty awesome job."

Advising 85 graduate students currently enrolled in the Language and Literacy program is also part of Policastro's job.

Although technically some grad students run the summer program and others observe, Policastro explains the reality to Cardiff.

"Observing is only used on paper because everyone works with the kids," Policastro says. "This is not a hurry-up-and-get- done program. We look at all the readers who struggle, whether temporarily or not. We bring brain research into the class."

Policastro's choice of words is an important element of her job. She has to be brutally honest when necessary and consistently encouraging to students. Encouragement comes naturally to her.

"I like what you did with the stations," she says in passing to a graduate student working in room 340.

Policastro consistently instills the program's underlying philosophy to her students:

"You have to believe that every child can read," she says. "That's the message we begin with, end with, it's woven into every course."

The graduate students can feel the challenge of this philosophy when it comes to teaching students like Susan. Susan has Smith's syndrome, a genetic disease entailing a learning disability. For six years she has returned to the same program. Although she has not learned to read the traditional way other students would, she can still read.