The Moment Everything Clicked

Well, I'd like to share my story to what led me to this passionate life I have around literacy and ensuring that all children learn to read. I was a 15-year veteran in the classroom, highly trained, I had my master's degree in reading, and I was teaching third grade.

I'll never forget the moment where the leaders in my building invited me to a student consultation team meeting. I remember, to this day, walking down the hallway. I remember the room, and I sat down at the table, and this guidance counselor, principal, school psych, they were all around the table. And they started giving me some data on a student, a student that had low fluency numbers on the DIBELS® assessment. And they were concerned that this student had some red flags, possible reading disability, and wanted to consider a special education referral. And I sat there listening, and then I realized that that student was my own daughter.

My own daughter, at that time, was a student in my classroom. I sat there listening and I just thought, “No. This can't be true.” My daughter. She's bright. She’s got this incredible oral language. She loves books and she loves school. I did everything right as a parent. I did everything right as a teacher and she just needs more time. I truly believed that because that was my training.

I was trained as a whole language reading and writing workshop teacher and I truly believed if I just kept reading to her and I just kept giving her experiences that she would learn to read. And I resisted, and I want people to know that. Like, as a teacher, I still resisted understanding what the science of reading was at the moment, but I felt this incredible weight because I'm her mother. And as her mother that has been trained as an educator, particularly trained in reading, like, shouldn't I have known? Shouldn't I have known that she had difficulty learning to read? How did I miss all of the signs? How did I miss the signs of all of my students?

And it's really, really, honestly, this weight I still bear today. And then what happened at that moment in third grade, I moved up into the middle school, and I became a seventh grade English Language Arts teacher. And I learned for the first time, after what? Eighteen years of teaching how children learn to read and I and I sat there at this 40-hour training and I thought, if my daughter had this kind of instruction, her journey would have been different. Matter of fact, if all the students that I worked with had this kind of instruction, their lives would have been different. And so in that moment in time, I dedicated my life to learn more and grow more and get more training.

So those kids that were in the middle school that had unfinished learning were going to be taught to read. And I was going to do everything in my power to teach them. And I always said every day to myself, if not me, who? And so that's where this journey started, and that's where I continue to go today and ensuring that I do whatever I can to serve these children, particularly the children in adolescent literacy who are in the middle and high school that they learn to read…because they can.

And guess what? My daughter? She graduated from high school. She graduated from college. She does have dyslexia, but she's doing wonderfully. But I always wish that in that moment of time where I had that time at that table, that I would have listened to that whisper a little bit more, and I would have dove into the science of reading in that moment.