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New York City
August 2002
Profiles in Education: Sandra Priest Rose
By Marylena Mantas

Since its inception more than 20 years ago, the Reading Reform Foundation of New York has given more than 3,000 teachers the tools necessary to bring their students closer to what the Foundation characterizes as a childs birthright to learn to read, write and spell accurately.

The Foundation does so through training teachers to teach by using all four sensory channels to the mind, while imparting a systematic, phonetic approach to the language.

Teachers who knew that children could read, write and spell well, but that the teachers were not trained to teach them established the organization, according to Sandra Priest Rose, a founding trustee of the Foundation who spent an early part of her career working as a reading consultant in Community School District 9 in the Bronx.

I had a wonderful year, she says of her experience in working with one student, but she realized that the child did not learn how to read. Rose vowed never to allow that to recur. Eager to make a change, she enrolled in a course conducted by Romalda Spalding, author of the The Writing Road to Reading. She explained that the course offered her a new outlook on teaching reading that she has promoted through the Reading Reform Foundation ever since.

According to Rose, teachers welcomed the phonetic method and began encouraging their principals to bring Reading Reform personnel into the schools to work with them.

In 1981, 24 teachers were enrolled in the Foundations courses. In the school year 2000-2001 that number increased to 242. In the same 20-year period, 3,730 teachers attended the Foundations courses, and 9,483 the Foundations annual conference. The 2002 conference is set to take place on November 10 at the NY Hilton and Towers.

The second component of training includes in-school teacher training, which brings a Reading Reform trainer into the classroom to work with a teacher for one year. The consultantwho returns the second year for a brief period to follow up with the teacher and to provide any additional supportassists the teacher in implementing the Foundations phonetic method.

According to Rose, trainers work in 48 classrooms and 22 schools in 12 school districts located in every borough except Staten Island. The in-school teacher training has touched the lives of approximately 14,000 students.

We see ourselves as a teacher training organization, said Lauren Wedeles, Executive Director of the Foundation. The year during which we are working with them, the teachers are also learners.

Some of the courses offered this summer include Reading, Writing & Spelling: A Multisensory Approach and The Writing Road to Reading: A Comprehensive Introduction. According to Rose, the techniques used are based on neurological and educational research.

We have found that kids need to position themselves on paper, she said, adding that they enforce accuracy in spelling, which is important both for spelling and comprehension.We are making English logical, intellectual and fun, she said.

The Foundation has partnered with several principals who will assist in tracking the progress made by students and teachers the Foundation has trained.

Our work is intensive. We would love to expand, but we dont want to lose the quality of work that we do, said Rose. We want other people to replicate what we do, but to do it as well as we do.#

For more information visit www.readingreform.org.

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All material is copyrighted and may not be printed without express consent of the publisher. © 2002.


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