In December of 2019, REAP and Georgia College launched an innovative program to train pre-service teachers in Structured Literacy. IDA-GA (International Dyslexia Association, Georgia branch) helped turn this exciting concept into a pilot program by providing Georgia College with an IDA-GA Education Grant. During the 2019-2020 academic year, REAP worked with seniors and juniors in the Early Childhood/Elementary Education program providing Structured Literacy training to prepare them to be strong reading teachers from Day 1 in the classroom.
Structured Literacy is useful for every reader, but is critical for successfully teaching struggling readers, including kids with dyslexia or ADHD, economically disadvantaged kids, and English language learners.
Expanding the program to include
additional training for 2020-2021
For the 2020-2021 academic year, REAP earned an IDA-GA Education Grant to expand the Structured Literacy training program to include additional training for the rising seniors and initial training for the rising juniors. Even though COVID forced us to take all the training online, the students were very engaged and did a great job of learning the material.
Kicking off Year Three
at Georgia College 2021-2022
On August 16th, REAP was excited to kick off our THIRD year of Structured Literacy training at Georgia College. We were very pleased with the amount of content the students had retained over the summer and they were eager for more.
Each year we work with about 100 juniors and seniors, helping prepare them to go out into Georgia classrooms and accomplish great things with young readers. We’re so grateful to have this opportunity, and we believe this training will make a real difference for Georgia’s public school students. Over time, each 100 trained teachers will benefit 40,000 readers!
P.S. We received this encouragement from a past graduate of Georgia College via Instagram:
“This makes me so happy! I graduated with my undergrad there 19 years ago and this training might have changed my teaching path!”