When my kids were young and I was homeschooling them, my mom became an educational therapist with NILD. I was fascinated with how she was trained and how she was able to help kids who had learning disabilities. I decided to take the training as well and found it well worth it. It sparked a deep interest in how the brain worked, especially the new advances in imaging technology that proved brain plasticity or the ability to change. I found it exciting to learn about how this could change the way educators approached learning and teaching.
Over the course of a year, I worked with several students, enjoyed it immensely and would have continued, but I needed a more substantial income. This led to me becoming a public school kindergarten teacher.
I had taught in private schools before I had kids, but had never taught in a public school. So I came in with an open mind and spent many years learning terminology and expected methods of teaching, some of which were new to me. I followed the curriculum, which mostly consisted of teaching letter names and sounds and once they learned all of them, teach the students how to blend them together to read.
About 2019, one of my co-workers asked me if I had ever heard of the facebook group, The Science of Reading: What I Should have Learned in College and shared with me an article by Emily Hanford, At a Loss for Words: How a Flawed Idea is Teaching Millions of Kids to be Poor Readers. She said they were both about why kids weren’t being taught to read the right way and that teachers were not trained correctly in college, either.
Thus began my new obsession with listening to all the podcasts and reading all the articles about teaching reading research.
The most significant for me and millions of others was the 10-episode podcast Sold a Story. It investigates how teaching kids to read went wrong.
This podcast sparked a question: What method would actually work? My research led me to discover a method that was phonics based, but was more efficient, streamlined, and more closely aligned with how the reading brain works than traditional phonics methods. The more I learned about Linguistic Phonics, the more it resonated with me. It made sense because of my experience teaching my own kids to read, my training as an educational therapist, and the research I had learned about the plasticity of the brain.
I decided that any training I pursued had to be based on linguistic phonics. Reading Simplified fit the bill, was affordable, and easily accessible. I decided to try a free activity from Reading Simplified, called Switch It, with my kindergarten class.
I saw exponential growth in many of my students. They were all engaged and showing understanding that they had lacked before. Some of them began reading words that had sounds I had not taught them. I was hooked. I wanted more.
So in May of 2023, I signed up for the Reading Simplified online course. I was able to try out the different activities with summer school students. These were the lowest quartile kindergarteners in the county. They were able to learn sounds in weeks that they couldn’t learn during all school year. They began putting sounds together. And their handwriting improved. All in fewer than 2 months.
The next year, I implemented Reading Simplified principles and activities as much as I could with my kindergarten class. I found that the dreaded blending hurdle was no longer such a problem for most of my students. Getting most of them to advanced phonics, not just basic phonics, was so easy. More of them were reading authentic texts than I had ever had before.
I just couldn’t get enough of seeing this growth and the sparkle in kids’ eyes as they were being so successful. I decided to start tutoring after school and in the summers.
Every child whom I tutored for at least 12 hours made at least one year of growth and all of them grew in their understanding of how reading works.
Some could not read at all; others appeared to be reading but lacked comprehension. Many of them, it turned out, didn’t understand how reading worked or how to use sound-based decoding. They were memorizing words.
What I love most about Reading Simplified is that it provides an individualized plan and pathway for each reader, focusing on their most pressing needs. Whether a student struggles with sound recognition, blending, or comprehension, the approach meets them where they are. The ultimate goal is always the same: help them understand how reading actually works and equip them with the skills to blend sounds, segment words, and flexibly work with the patterns of the English language. When students grasp these foundational skills, everything changes and they become independent readers.
I’m grateful I discovered Reading Simplified and continue to use it to tutor beginning and struggling readers of all ages. It works, and that’s why I’m passionate about sharing it with families who need it most.