Today’s diverse students enter school eager to become successful in classrooms originally designed for culturally homogeneous populations and are expected to learn from teachers who are often not from the same cultural, ethnic/race or social-class. Unsurprisingly, student performance in reading and other subjects is often low while student dropout and teacher burnout rates are high. This program guides participants to explore and document their experiences in motivating at-risk students to become effective readers. In addition to sharing successful strategies for improving reading skills and producing a written narrative, participants will examine barriers children encounter along the pathway and how these barriers affected them. Additionally participants will become familiar with strategies they can use today to change the culture of the classroom to support the development of higher order thinking skills while enhancing self-motivation, personal responsibility, and perseverance to become skilled readers who excel academically.