Teaching Reading the Right Way
This session was presented at the Imaging the Future Forum as part of international celebrations of World Creativity and Innovation Week (wciw.org) sponsored by Haggerty & Haggerty Digital and My Favorite Art Place.
Sharon Hillestad presents the history of teaching reading from pioneer days to present time. She shows how John Dewy’s take on education was at odds with Maria Montesorri’s philosophy during the early 1900s, what was lost and what was gained and how it influences teacher training today.
Sharon has studied the whole language and psycholinguistics techniques of teaching children to read extensively. She has also been trained in traditional phonics and the Barnhart & Bloomfield Linguistics technique of teaching reading. Her experience in teaching children and adults how to read has made her an expert on Balanced Instruction.
Viewers will gain insight on what they can do to help their own students or children improve their reading skills using best practices and research-based strategies.
Sharon began her educational career in 1954, as a third-grader, helping younger students in her one-room schoolhouse in Wisconsin. As an adult, she earned a college degree and started post-graduate work in remedial reading. She became a third-grade teacher and taught in Wisconsin and Minnesota public schools. Sharon’s education in reading instruction began when her own son had difficulty learning to read. She read the book Why Johnny Can’t Read, by Rudolf Flesch. That book revealed that systematic phonics instruction had been removed from the teachers’ colleges. This impacted students, creating increasing numbers of children who had difficulty learning to read. In 1979, she founded the Minnesota Homeschool Network. In 1980, she joined the Reading Reform Foundation and became the State Representative for Wisconsin and Minnesota. In 1981, Sharon founded her own private one-room schoolhouse in Hastings, MN.
Through the years of raising her three children and involvement in education reform, Sharon consulted with parents and provided tutoring to children and adults alike. In 2000, Sharon joined her daughter Holly in Florida. She became the Director of Tutoring at the Community Learning Center. In the early 2000s, she worked with Holly and her son-in-law to design the Smart Way Reading and Spelling program, which is based upon the findings of the National Reading Panel. In the early 2000s, Sharon served as the Florida State Representative for the National Right to Read Foundation. In 2005, she designed and delivered a Family Literacy Program under a grant she wrote and got approved for the Governor’s Family Literacy Initiative (GFLI, under Governor Jeb Bush). From 2016-2019, she worked as an elementary classroom teacher. Today, Sharon does private tutoring, volunteers, and writes books.
To purchase Sharon Hillestad’s book, The Reading Way visit:
To find out more about Sharon and read her blog visit: cloudninelearning.com
The World Creativity & Innovation Week Opening Presentation and Imagining the Future Forum were sponsored by:
My Favorite Art Place
Clearwater, FL
727-726-7411
https://myfavoriteartplace.com/
Haggerty & Haggerty Digital Services
Clearwater, FL
727-755-0888
https://haggertydigital.com/
For more information about World Creativity & Innovation Week and Day visit: https://wciw.org/
#WCIW #IamCreative #MFAP