Literacy Now

We are so excited to bring you this powerful episode with Sonya Thomas, the passionate founder and Executive Director of Nashville P.R.O.P.E.L. Sonya shares her deeply personal journey into advocacy, beginning as a mother of four who was determined to secure a better future for her children. When she saw that her younger son was struggling to learn to read in his earliest years of school, advocating for him became a full-time job. ...

We are thrilled to bring you this interview with Dr. Heather Peske. Heather is the President of the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) and a former elementary school teacher. She shares how her early experiences teaching reading, combined with her experience as a parent of a struggling reader, fuel her commitment to improve teacher preparation nationwide. In addition, her work as a state policymaker transformed her understa...

We are thrilled to bring you this conversation with Missy Purcell, a former teacher and Mom of a son with dyslexia. Missy is also the co-Founder of the Facebook page, The Science of Reading for Advocates and Gwinnette County Advocates for Dyslexia. Missy's initial professional training and practice was steeped in a 'balanced literacy' approach, and in particular, the Reading and Writing Workshop model developed by Lucy ...

We are excited to bring you a new mini-series called "Literacy Now, Together." We've teamed up with FULCRUM’s Kareem Weaver to interview parents, literacy experts, and thought leaders to examine the literacy crisis and highlight the steps people are taking to improve literacy rates across the county. In this episode, we meet Jackie and Lawrence from Niagara Falls, New York, who have two children with IEPs. Although th...

For our 18th episode, and 2nd international episode!, we are excited to bring you Kim Lockhart. Kim is a French bilingual immersion teacher and special education teacher in Canada. Despite attending a top-tier undergraduate teaching program and earning a master's degree, Kim didn't learn anything about how to teach children to read. That didn't come until she went through an Orton-Gillingham training program. Join us fo...

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In this episode of Literacy Now, we talk with Rebecca Tolson.  Rebecca is the Director of the Center for Structured Literacy at the University of Akron.  Previously, she was the Vice President of Literacy Initiatives at Neuhaus Education Center and an adjunct professor in the master's of dyslexia therapy program at Walsh University.  Rebecca started her career as a 5th grade general education teacher, trained in the 'whole...

'A worried mother does better research than the FBI!'

We are so excited to bring you this inspiring conversation with Robin Zikmund! Robin is the founder of Decoding Dyslexia Idaho, a dyslexia advocate for the Institute for Multi-Sensory Education, and the parent of a child with dyslexia. Robin shares with us the history of missed opportunities and delays by many experts including the educational system to identify her son's strugg...

In this episode of Literacy Now, we talk with Todd Collins, a school board member in Palo Alto, California and founder of the California Reading Coalition. Todd is a self-described "accidental education advocate". Upon joining his school board, Todd assumed that the district knew how to teach reading pretty well. Overall state test scores were high. But he started to wonder if this was due to instruction or to something about the f...

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We are so excited to welcome Dr. Tracy White Weeden to our podcast!  Tracy is the President and CEO of Neuhaus Education Center, a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote reading success by providing evidence-based professional development to educators, information and resources to families, and direct services to adult learners. Tracy begins with her family history and professional journey. That journey...

Summary

We are so excited to welcome Dr. Tracy White Weeden to our podcast!  Tracy is the President and CEO of Neuhaus Education Center, a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote reading success by providing evidence-based professional development to educators, information and resources to families, and direct services to adult learners. Tracy begins with her family history and professional journey. That journey...

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​We are excited to bring you this fascinating conversation with Kait Feriante. Kait is the co-founder of Redwood Schools (Chicago), which include two full-day K-8 schools for students with dyslexia, and a program for young adults who are court-involved who struggle with reading and writing.  Kait is also a former Chicago Public Schools teacher and parent of a child with dyslexia.  Kait shares with us her perspective gained ...

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In this episode of Literacy Now, we meet an amazing parent advocate, Jenine Hanson. Jenine is from Naperville, Illinois, a city which is consistently listed in the top 10 U.S. cities in which to raise a family, particularly because of its excellent schools.  So when her oldest child was having difficulty with learning to read as early as 1st grade, Jenine started asking a lot of questions.  She takes us through her family&#...

"You just gave me the code to the English language. I can read!"

We are thrilled to bring you this inspiring conversation with David Chalk.  David is a Canadian technology entrepreneur, cybersecurity specialist, and a media personality. Until very recently, he couldn't read.  David has learning disabilities including acute dyslexia.  He shares the physical, mental and emotional toll it has taken on him throughout his life.  He knew...

We are so excited to welcome Donna Hejtmanek to our podcast!  Donna is the founder of the Facebook page, Science of Reading- What I Should Have Learned in College.

She is also a retired special education teacher and reading specialist. In our conversation, Donna talks about what led her to form the Facebook group, how it supports teachers and parents, and how it developed into the incredible resource it is today with over 230,000 m...

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"Parents are the Key!"

In this episode, we are thrilled to introduce you to Nora Chabazi. Nora is the founder of EBLI (Evidence Based Literacy Instruction), whose mission is to teach the world to read. Having left her career as a neonatal intensive care nurse to raise her three children, Nora soon found that she needed to quickly learn about reading instruction. Her daughter, who was gifted in math, was a year be...

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In this episode, we talk with Margie Gillis, founder of the nonprofit Literacy How. Margie is a nationally recognized literacy expert whose career has been steeped in the science of reading from the very beginning. Margie has been teaching children to read for over 40 years, and she founded Literacy How in 2009 to provide professional development and coaching to teachers and school districts so they learn how best to imple...

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"The children are our customers...and the parents are our stakeholders, and I think if you think of it in those terms, you can make a lasting effect on a district."

We are thrilled to introduce you to Dr. Kevin Gorman.  Dr. Gorman is a recently retired Director of Student Services in the Upper Arlington, Ohio school district.  Many years ago, Dr. Gorman knew little about dyslexia or evidence-based instructional methods. Th...

"We weren't just a group of angry Moms; we were a group of Moms who were educated and knew what the school was supposed to be doing, and they weren't doing it."

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We are so excited to introduce you to Julie Kowalczyk. She is President of Decoding Dyslexia - Ottawa Hills, Ohio, and a member of OH-KID (Ohio Kids Identified with Dyslexia).  Julie is a former 7th grade literature teacher, and a 4th generation teacher in her fam...

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Today on Literacy Now is a special broadcast of a few extended conversations we had with our colleague and good friend Kareem Weaver. In Part 3, we dive more deeply into advocacy efforts- not just what advocates can and should do, but how to effectively partner with other stakeholders who are like-minded in this cause, but not necessarily like-minded in other areas. Kareem also tells us about school districts that are demo...