Even as a first year teacher, it didn’t take long to realize that for most of my students, reading was really hard. They struggled to decode the words in most of the grade level material I handed them. I felt like I was failing because I didn’t know how to fix it.
This realization sparked a passion in me to figure out why kids were getting to 5th grade without being able to read well. I moved to kindergarten, then first grade, and dove into the research about teaching kids to read.
During the 18 years I spent as a classroom teacher, I pursued my master’s degree in Literacy Studies, became endorsed as a reading specialist, completed my National Board certification in early childhood, and became trained in Orton-Gillingham.
