I had definitely not expected the phone call I received on a hot August morning in 1997, two days before the commencement of a new school year in Davie County. One of four newly created reading positions was being offered to me. “Yes, I’d love to join the Shady Grove team!” I responded. After a disappointingly brief fifteen minute interview I was certain that the highly coveted job had eluded me. Instead, the desire of my heart to be a full-time reading teacher was being realized at that very moment. That was five short years ago and I continue to be blessed holding this position, the culmination of training, teaching, and life experiences that began at Kent State University in 1970. Kent State, well known as a teacher’s college serving northeastern Ohio and neighboring states, offered a highly respected degree in the teaching of the hearing-impaired. In addition, I qualified for generous financial grants that guaranteed an oppor!tunity to go away to Kent rather than attend a local commuter college. My schooling at Kent afforded a strong foundation of speech, language, and much practicum hours at the local University Elementary School. Upon graduation, I accepted a position at a school in my hometown of Youngstown. Stambaugh Elementary housed the satellite Hearing Impaired Department that served all the county schools. Our student population was close to one hundred taught by ten teachers. I taught six years there before having my son and later moving to North Carolina in 1985. I thoroughly enjoyed being a stay at home mom, gaining lots of real life hands-on experiences with my child. However, when he began school, I began substitute teaching in the Davie County School System. This part-time schedule allowed me to teach, without all of the extra responsibilities of full-time teaching, thus not interfering with valued family time. Over this 10 year period, besides daily substituting in regula!r and special classes, I also taught many interim positions, as well as five years of part-time remediation. During the last two years of remediation I was trained in a one-on-one reading intervention program for first graders, developed by Dr. Darrell Morris of Appalachian State University. This training provided a powerful and rewarding approach to reading that inspired me to take my career in that direction, reading, a direction that has roots in my childhood.

I grew up in a suburb of a blue-collar melting pot city that was home to three major steel mills. European immigrants populated this area in hope of a better life for their children. Well paying union jobs provided a good living and good schools. Education was important but manual labor jobs were abundant, so there were options for all. My father, a laborer, and my mother, an office manager, valued our education, but didn’t seem to have a vision for we three children beyond high school graduation. Children’s books were never abundant in our home, but both my parents were avid readers; my mother loved fiction and my father read our very liberal newspaper religiously as well as magazines. Trips to the library in the late 50’s allowed a three book limit to children which was never enough for me. My dolls and stuffed animals grew bored after several readings of the same books. I was ready to go back the next day for more, but we didn’t. !I believe I devoured every Nancy Drew book written and some Hardy Boys at that, but as I grew older and more politically schooled by my dad, the newspaper became an everyday read with special attention given to opinionated columnists. To this day, I read the newspaper front to back daily. I gained an appreciation for good literature in my high school classes, especially the short story, but the older I became the more non-fiction I read, mainly because in my limited free time I felt I always needed to learn something if I was going to take the time to read.

This love for learning motivated me to do well in school to the point that my high school teachers persuaded my parents that I should be tracked in the college prep classes. My high school guidance counselor assisted me in applying to Kent State. I had often tutored a younger cousin with a hearing-impairment and thought it would be “nice” to become a teacher of the deaf. As I looked over the program catalog I remember the class heading “Reading for the Deaf.” Naively I thought, “How nice to read to deaf children!” I could not begin to fathom how unprepared I really was. Four years later, degree in hand, I began my first year teaching the hearing impaired. My undergraduate training with strong emphasis in language and speech served me well as language was the vehicle to reading. Because we were a “oral communications” school as opposed to a sign language school, s!peech and all of its components were taught daily. My six years of working with these children made me so very aware of the complexities of language and breaking the code to reading. My knowledge of language acquisition in children also caused concern for my own two and a half year old’s delay in expressive language. As opposed to my early childhood, I made sure that there was an abundance of books available for my child. He loved being read to and usually feel asleep with books strewn about in his bed. He also watched Sesame Street daily. As time passed and he still wasn’t talking, I was ready to seek the advice of a specialist. Amazingly, before an appointment was made, he began talking and reading almost simultaneously. Although he was later identified as academically gifted, I learned from my own son the benefits of reading to young children in combination with “sounds instruction” (Sesame Street). He had been given no !e formal” reading instruction. My best advice to young parents is to talk, talk, talk and read, read, read to your child from infancy on. My learning from young children continued on through substitute teaching. I usually took assignments in K-2 as I enjoyed working with this age group more than the older children. In the mid to late 80’s, Davie County used basal readers and had a policy that limited children reading at a higher level to the basal that corresponded to their grade level. This policy affected my own son who was reading at a sixth grade level in first grade. Although as a parent I supplemented his reading, he definitely did not enjoy reading at school. In the early 90’s the whole language approach was adopted at several of the county schools. I was a good friend of a first grade teacher who trained me in this philosophy of reading. I gained valuable hands-on experience and knowledge by working as a volunteer/trainee in her class!room. I loved how the children could progress at their own pace and not be bored or limited by a basal. Inventive spelling was encouraged as the traditional spelling program was halted. However, three years after the approach was adopted, discrepancies in third and fourth grade performance began to arise. The higher-level students were making good growth, but the lower-level readers were struggling and needed much more support than whole language offered. Spelling discrepancies were across the board at all levels. It was thought that the children would gain spelling knowledge and skills by exposure to the literature and writing, but this did not occur. Numbers of children reading below grade level increased and remediation was necessary. It was at this time that I was hired to be a part-time remediation teacher. I was given free reign as to how to proceed. I relied on my training in working with the hearing-impaired and began teaching sounds, as these children were! weak in encoding and decoding. Most could not even rhyme so I started with word families. I continued using trade books but with much teacher support. I felt like I was on the right track, but had no expertise to consult or back up what I was doing. I maintained this direction in remediation for the next two years.

In 1995, I received training in First Steps, which is an intervention program for first graders that was developed by Dr. Darrell Morris from Appalachian State. I was relieved to find that the main components in this approach confirmed what I had been doing in my remediation teaching. First Steps is a balanced model of reading that consists of reading leveled books with natural language, a word study component (sounds), and a written component. Targeted at at-risk first graders, the program provides a vehicle for individual growth at the child’s instructional level in a daily one-to-one setting. The following year I tutored First Step children exclusively. Never in my teaching had I felt so confident in an approach. The children made steady progress with impressive year end results. By no means a cure, First Steps does provide a model that prevents at-risk readers from falling too far behind their peers. Key emphasis is on early intervention. Davie County rec!ognized this and in the following year reading teacher positions were created in addition to existing Title 1 instructors. I was hired for one of these jobs, but was required to earn my Masters in Reading. Providentially, ASU established a Masters in Reading extension program at WSSU which has facilitated that goal. Teaching by the ASU instructors has had a major influence on what I believe about and how I teach reading today. Using the First Steps model, my instruction is based on three main components: phonological awareness(encoding and decoding), fluency (rate and comprehension), and vocabulary development. A child must be taught at his/her instructional reading level for optimal results. I have also had intense training in the Orton-Gillingham method. This multi-sensory approach for severely disabled readers has given me a foundational base of knowledge and strategies for teaching sounds. It has made me feel complete in my ability to teach a wide spectrum of re!aders.

Looking back, I am amazed at how far I’ve come form the naïve high school graduate wanting to “read books to deaf children” to a self-confident reading teacher who can assess, analyze, diagnose, prescribe, and provide appropriate reading instruction to readers at risk. This has been an evolutionary process facilitated by my childhood, undergrad, and graduate instruction, teaching and life experiences, and last but not least the grace of God.