ABOUT
Every child deserves to learn to read.
And every teacher deserves to be taught how to teach it.
Hey! I'm Tina.
We talk constantly about children who can't read. We almost never talk about the fact that most of us were never taught how to teach them.
That isn't a failing of teachers. It's a gap in how teachers are trained, and it has been sitting there a very long time. We get sent into classrooms with enormous goodwill, a pile of readers and almost no understanding of how reading actually works in a child's brain.
Then we're left to work it out on our own, at the end of a teaching day that has already taken everything we had. Usually alone.
Support staff have it harder still. Teacher aides do more one to one reading with struggling children than almost anyone in a school, and they're given the least training to do it.
So I'm not that interested in another conversation about a reading crisis.
I'm interested in the much simpler problem underneath it.
Teach the teacher, and the children follow.
That's what The Literacy School is for. To hand you what nobody handed me, so you can walk into reading time knowing exactly what you're doing and exactly why it works.
I thought I was ready
When I started teaching, I was so excited. I genuinely believed I was going to change lives. My plan was simple. Help every child in my class fall in love with reading and writing.
I was passionate, determined, and looking back, a little bit naive.
I thought I had everything I needed.
Then I met the children my training hadn't prepared me for
I couldn't have told you how the brain learns to read. I couldn't have told you why one child picked it up while the child sitting beside them didn't. And I certainly couldn't have told you what to do about it.
So I did what I could. I pulled lessons together minutes before the bell. I bought worksheets that looked about right and hoped they'd add up to something.
I sat in planning meetings nodding along, because I didn't have the words for what I was seeing, and I was quietly terrified that somebody would ask me a question I couldn't answer.
And the children kept falling behind. Not because I didn't care. I cared enormously. That was the hardest part of it.
Can I tell you the bit I'm least proud of?
When a child got stuck on a word, I'd tell them to sound it out.
And when a parent asked what they could do at home, I'd tell them to read more.
I said both of those things kindly, and often, and with absolutely no idea they weren't helping.
Because sound it out only works if a child already knows what sounds those letters make. If nobody has taught them that yet, we aren't teaching at all. We're asking a child to guess, and quietly hoping.
And read more at home sounds so reasonable, doesn't it. But reading practice consolidates a skill. It doesn't create one.
So without ever meaning to, I was sending children home to spend their evenings struggling, in front of the people who loved them most.
I think about that more than I probably should.
Then I met the children my training hadn't prepared me for
I couldn't have told you how the brain learns to read. I couldn't have told you why one child picked it up while the child sitting beside them didn't. And I certainly couldn't have told you what to do about it.
So I did what I could. I pulled lessons together minutes before the bell. I bought worksheets that looked about right and hoped they'd add up to something.
I sat in planning meetings nodding along, because I didn't have the words for what I was seeing, and I was quietly terrified that somebody would ask me a question I couldn't answer.
And the children kept falling behind. Not because I didn't care. I cared enormously. That was the hardest part of it.
So, where would you like to start?
Two ways in, depending on what you need right now.
I want to know exactly what to teach.
Ready-to-use resources with short walkthroughs that show you how to use them.
I want someone in my corner.
Mentorship for the teacher who'd rather not figure it all out alone.
