Why have I spent 28 years of my life developing reading resources?
I started working as the Special Ed teacher in a high school in 1986. I was supporting students in years 7 to 9 (approx. 12 to 15-year-old boys) who needed help with maths and English to be able to keep up with the class. I found several things:
- They were angry that they hadn’t been taught to read “properly”, meaning that they couldn’t read adequately now.
- There wasn’t time to both address their difficulties and help them keep up with their class work.
- There didn’t seem to be anything that I could give them that they could take away to work on to “fill in the gaps”. One mother did show me a program that she had found that looked good, but her son, who was about 15, told me that he hated it.
- They were happy to help me develop games to help younger children.
I had no background in teaching reading. I was given the job ahead of other qualified candidates because I could help them with their maths and “anyone could help them with their English” – not true, but that was how I started.
My experience was in teaching maths and science (geology) to older students. So I had an analytical mind, no background and no resources. It turned out to be the start of my life’s work. I developed resources to help my students. Often the resources weren’t finished for those particular students, but were available for the next ones. I found that there were common difficulties that most students who were struggling seemed to experience.
Later, I was helping Year 11 students whose reading, and more particularly spelling, was holding them back from what they wanted to do in life. Again, I had nothing to give them that they could take away and work on to improve their basic skills. That’s when I developed my first computer program, Spelling Tutor (now in The Gilead Success with Reading Program, Part 2). It tackled the main problems that they were having – splitting long words into syllables, keeping the syllables in order as well as the sounds within the syllables, and then writing them down. All the instructions, words and syllables had to be recorded so that they didn’t have to have any particular level of skill in reading to be able to use the program independently.
Then I started thinking about what would have helped my students if they had had it when they were younger, so that they could have avoided the years of distress. So I found a good authoring program, learned computer programing as I went, and developed Alphabet Album and Phonic Comics. (They are now in The Gilead Success with Reading Program, Part 1 and they also form the basis of Gilead Success Phonics).
After I retired, most of my grandchildren were home-schooled, so I was often asked, “Mum, do you have something for …?” If I didn’t already have anything, I developed it. Eventually, I ended up with a fairly comprehensive set of computer programs, books and games to teach reading and spelling from beginners to adults. No background in teaching reading and spelling was needed to use them, and no time consuming training programs. Parents could help their own children, older students could help themselves and busy teachers could easily implement them.
Now some of the questions I am facing are
- “How can my years of work help other children, older students and adults who are struggling?”
- “How can I make it available to anyone who needs it?”
Over the years other programs have been developed – other people have seen the same need. Many of them probably have large teams of professional programmers, etc. I am just me, with some help from my family with photos, videos and art work, plus plenty of grandchildren to trial programs.
- “Is there still a need for what I have developed?”
- “Have I wasted 25+ years of my life?”
- “Where to now?”
I have recently read about the genesis of the Khan Academy. A very inspiring story!
- “Can I put enough of my work onto the internet for free, or minimal cost, to actually be useful for children to learn the key skills – particularly those experiencing difficulties or from deprived backgrounds?”
- “Can I be part of empowering parents, children, students and teachers to improve literacy and thus confidence, competence and self-esteem?”
- “Can I be part of making this world a better place?”
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