My parents were both college professors; so, I grew up on a college campus, and attended a laboratory school. At the time, my first-grade teacher was working on her Ph. D at The Ohio State University. It was there that she became enamored with Arthur Irving Gates, the well-known educational psychologist. Both she and her professor at Ohio State had been inspired by his research detailed in Improvement of Reading and they loved his earlier work, The Principles of Education written with E.L. Thorndike.

Gates believed that the traditional teaching of phonetic skills was a “wasteful way of providing children with useful techniques for recognizing new and unfamiliar words because the transfer of the skill was incomplete.”

Following Gates, my first-grade teacher left me unable to read a word, if I could not remember the whole word. I think back to second grade. I could not read the word “fence”. The student teacher told me to take my book and go to Room 8. Room 8 was where you were sent when you could not do something that you were supposed to be able to do. I started down the big wide hall. My book felt like a very heavy brick, and my stomach was in a knot. To this day, I cannot tell you who was in Room 8 or what happened there. I did not last long in Room. The only thing that I can tell you is is that day I knew one thing. When I grew up, I was going to teach children how to read. No student of mine would be referred to Room 8.

There were five of us, so some had to stay home to go to college. I was sixteen years old that day I registered to major in elementary education. One day I was going to be able to teach children how to read. My resolve did not last long. Everywhere I went on campus; I ran into my own first-grade teacher. Her eyes would say to me “Can you read yet?” I changed my major to math.

Graduating, all I could think of was getting one of those cadet certificates. I took the twelve hours that summer and off I went to be a teacher. Children were going to learn to read. My first class of fifty-two filled the room. Joy filled my heart. Soon, I found that it takes more than joy. Luckily, I was given a teacher’s manual, where there was a section called, “Building Essential Habits and Skills.” We got to work.

After three years of trying, I thought I had it. However, then I went to Gary, Indiana. My first evaluation – “This teacher shows the ability to become a great teacher.” I said to the evaluator, “to become” means not yet a good teacher. I asked him to let me go around and see some good teachers teach. He did. That was my start to becoming an excellent teacher.

Being an excellent teacher that could teach any child to read was still very important to me. I didn’t read any more about teaching reading. I went to different school systems and watched teachers that the system felt were very good. In the summer, I would work on my master’s. I learned something very important from Dr. Leanora Carrington Lane.

Dr. Lane had retired, but she was lecturing for the regular teacher. She came into the classroom and walked to the board and put nine characters on the board.

She looked at us and pointed to the symbols and said, “If you have sufficient knowledge of nine symbols, you can write and read reams and reams of papers.” That day, I started deciding what sufficient knowledge of the alphabet and the punctuation could be for a primary child.

One day while walking on the campus, I saw my first- grade teacher. There she was. Her eyes once more said, “What is she doing now? She can’t read. The researchers say when you have trouble in the primary grades, you always have a problem.” I read her eyes, but I was so excited that I yelled out what was on my mind. “I’m going to start my own school!” She looked at me with surprise and said, “Wait a minute. You have no methodology!!”

That was it. I was on my way. I worked and worked. I watched my students and watched, but something was missing. My plan was not going the way I wanted it to. Then came that day in March. I was out for Spring Break – the phone rang, and a voice said, “Your daughter has been hit by a car while getting off the school bus. You need to come to the school bus stop immediately.”

Seven months later I walked back into my classroom only to find out that at this new school I would be teaching first grade instead of second grade, which I had always taught.

I looked around for my materials and found none. Good, I said to myself, time to write a program. Working from day one, I soon found everything I had been looking for. I had developed a sound reading program. Methodology was there!

Sitting on the platform looking out at all the people at the luncheon, all I could see was my first-grade teacher’s eyes. I thought What! She is no longer here. Then I heard my name. I was being inducted into my University’s Hall of Fame because of my program for teaching reading.

Now looking at my bucket list, there is one thing on it. Sharing my reading program with others, with the hope no other student will have to take the long unhappy walk to Room 8. Their teacher has already been there.