During the 2023-24 school year, Falk Laboratory School has offered an exciting initiative in support of students’ literacy learning while centering each child’s unique identity. 

Falk’s literacy clinic, run by Brianna Amoscato and Ms. Samantha Utley-Schmitt, has provided one-on-one tutoring to 37 students from Falk and Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS). Twenty University of Pittsburgh students (19 of them undergraduate) have served as volunteers, working closely to provide children with intensive, differentiated, intentional tutoring. 

The clinic was inspired by Mrs. Amoscato’s desire to “cast a wider net in terms of community,” she says, pairing the Pitt student volunteers with children from across the City of Pittsburgh. It was driven, too, by her reflections on herself as an educator and her desire to become a better literacy teacher following her National Board Certification in English Language Arts. 

Mrs. Amoscato taught second grade at Falk during the 2022-23 school year. Before coming to Falk, she taught third grade for seven years in the Fox Chapel School District. She’s always been passionate about literacy, and during her year as a teacher at Falk Mrs. Amoscato ran a free two-and-a-half-hour group tutoring session once a week for students who wanted to participate and improve their reading and writing. 

Having her and her husband’s first child in the spring of 2023 provided Mrs. Amoscato with a chance to step back, she says, and think about ways that Falk and Pitt could do more community outreach in terms of literacy. A program like the literacy clinic could not only support children in their literacy learning but also provide a chance for undergraduate and graduate students in Pitt’s School of Education to “get their feet wet,” honing their literacy teaching skills, long before they formally began their student teaching. 

While similar literacy-focused clinics exist within Pittsburgh, what sets Falk’s literacy clinic apart is the way that it puts culturally responsive teaching practices at the center of its work. In conceptualizing the clinic, Mrs. Amoscato drew on frequent conversations, guidance and mentorship from Samantha Schmitt, Falk’s Equity, Inclusion, and Justice Coordinator, about the work of author and scholar Gholdy Muhammad. 

“We talked about the importance of not only being able to read and write but for students to be able to express their identity,” Mrs. Amoscato says. Also important to the clinic are Muhammad’s other pillars, such as criticality, joy, skills, and intellect. 

“It’s the science of reading paired with those other things,” says Mrs. Amoscato. “Students seeing their own perspectives in literature is very important in terms of making students feel safe, seeing their identities mirrored, seeing themselves cultivating their own genius.” 

Centering students’ cultural identity may take the form of reading about heroes who aren’t often represented in textbooks, or providing students with historical books they may not have encountered before. 

A major part of the clinic’s efforts to center these pillars comes in the form of literacy Saturdays, during which participants gather at Falk to hear from social justice speakers for readings, discussions, and presentations. (On one of these Saturdays, the group heard from Jasmine Cho, an activist, author, and cookie artist known for using portrait cookies to increase representation of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.) 

“It’s really important that students know that we’re not just reading to read but to understand the lived experiences and histories of others,” Amoscato says. Bringing in speakers is a big part of the program, she adds, “in terms of creating a cultural literacy family.” 

Cultural identity should be centered, Mrs. Amoscato says, because the curriculum given to a teacher may not always be representative of the identities that the teacher sees in the classroom. 

“Culture plays a large part in how students see themselves represented, or not represented, in literature,” she says. PPS students enrolled in the program attend Liberty and Woolslair, and a majority are students of color. 

“I think the work of the clinic also aligns with Pitt’s mission of being equity-minded and celebrating the stories of all of our students,” she adds. 

Mrs. Amoscato cites a Frederick Douglass quote that has always inspired her and informed her work, and which she says is always at the forefront of her mind: 

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”