Welcome!

Do you remember learning how to read? Was it easy for you? Challenging? Did you develop a lifelong love of books and reading? Or did the whole experience have a negative impact on you?

How each person learns to read and engages with literacy throughout their life is unique. This Maurice Sendak quote, to me, represents the journey of each each child who is learning to read:

“Inside all of us is hope. Inside all of us is fear. Inside all of us is adventure. Inside all of us is a wild thing.”

Children enter school with such a wide variety of hopes and fears and run headlong into the adventure of learning. Somewhere along the journey, though, some children stumble, lose some hope, gain some fear, and begin to see school, not as an adventure, but as an obligation. When children come to see me, my biggest goal is to help them regain hope and a sense of adventure through reading and writing. Sure, I design instruction based on assessment outcomes, focused on evidence-based best practices, and use materials that support standards-based rigorous instruction designed for diverse learners. But what I want the children to know is that they are safe, they are loved, they have agency over their learning, and they can try and fail and try again.

By removing the judgement and internalized identity of being a “good reader” or a “bad reader” and seeing the practical need for engaging with literacy throughout our lives, children can develop the necessary skills to be literate in the 21st Century. Maybe, along the way, they will also develop an appreciation for books and the adventures the stories can take them on.