Leon Hayes, executive director of support services for Horry County Schools, received the Friend of Reading Recovery Award at the South Carolina Literacy Conference held recently in Charleston, South Carolina. Hayes was honored for the leadership he has provided for the Reading Recovery program at the state and national levels. As a former principal at Loris Elementary School, Hayes utilized the Reading Recovery program to provide intervention to struggling readers. He was able to share the success his students and teachers experienced with the program with other educators and educational leaders through national conferences and consultation.

Reading Recovery is a highly effective short-term intervention of one-to-one tutoring for low-achieving first graders. Individual students receive a half-hour lesson each school day for 12 to 20 weeks with a specially trained Reading Recovery teacher. As soon as students can meet grade-level expectations and demonstrate that they can continue to work independently in the classroom, their lessons are discontinued.