Changing the landscape of reading in Puerto Rico

In the last decade, a growing body of research has documented that teachers often lack sufficient knowledge in teaching beginning and struggling readers (Moats, 2009). Furthermore, experienced and inexperienced teachers typically have received insufficient training to understand children’s needs, which often delays the identification and intervention of students with dyslexia (Joshi & Wijekumar, 2019). Consequently, a wait-to-fail model is what most students and their families confront. While research has shown that students respond best when provided with structured literacy intervention in the primary grades, most students are not identified until after third grade (Gaab, 2010). This delay in intervention makes it even more challenging for dyslexic students to overcome the learning gap. As part of our commitment to changing the landscape of teaching reading in Puerto Rico we recognize the value of training teachers as drivers of change due to their protagonism at the forefront of educational innovation.  Understanding this, and having trained teachers successfully in English since 2010, Lectores para el futuro is focused on launching a Spanish Orton-Gillingham Teacher Training Program that will equip teachers to implement our instructional materials with the necessary expertise to be able to address the particular needs of struggling readers. Our organization has grown in the past three years as our initiatives, especially the OG Spanish pilot program, are closer to taking place as we aim to begin our pilot program this August 2024 with our OG certified teachers and students with different school systems in order to have a representative cohort. We are very excited of soon seeing come to fruition the program we have envisioned and are so eager to have available to a much needed population. Thanks to all who have been part of supporting this process in all the years we have been dreaming of and working on. 

Professional development for teachers is essential in order for them to have the strategies needed to succed in their classrooms. We continue committed to contribue on teacher preparation on evidence based reading instruction.

We participated in:

• Provided two presentations at the Convention for the Association of Private Schools.
• Provided workshop on the fundamentals of reading instruction to school administrators for the Department of Education.
• Offered the 5 workshop serie of the Reading Brain to teachers fom two educational regions of the 7 of the Department of Education, San Juan and Humacao. (Previously we had offered it to the other 5 regions.)

As we see the importance of providing professional develpment, we also know it is important for our own teachers as well and for such two our staff members participated of the Plain Talk Conference this year with is offered by The Center for Literacy and Learning.