Blog

The Best Job in the World

December 22, 2023

by Rhonda Stone

There is a saying: “Do what you love and you’ll never work another day in your life.”

Not sure I like the phrase. When I first heard it, it made me feel guilty. I was “working” too much, too hard, and the pressure and fatigue were wearing me down. Yet, I’ve been blessed to always enjoy my work.

I have a new phrase:

The best job in the world is the one you love…because you’re helping others. It may not be the easiest, and it may have it’s ups and downs, but you wouldn’t do anything else because it’s making a difference in someone’s life.

Read Right Systems would like to extend our sincerest thanks to EVERY individual, family, school, and adult reading group ever connected to the power of Read Right methodology. Whether as a student, parent, teacher, teaching assistant, or a current and former Read Right staff member, you are the reason we have the best jobs in the world.

We thank you and wish you an amazing year in 2024.

And, in celebration of Read Right’s 40 years of work, we invite you to share your personal stories below of how Read Right made a difference for you:

From Syrena S:

“Wanted to share this beautiful win with you: Autumn volunteered to read in front of her WHOLE school for a school assembly today! It was a short passage about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Huge thank you for helping give her the confidence in reading to do this!”

From Angela CS:

“We had pretty much given up hope that our very bright 10th grade son would learn to read. My husband was at a school-related conference and called to tell me about people he met who tutor reading over the phone. What??? Really??? I went to the Read Right presentation and met (Dr. Dee Tadlock). We all said, “Let’s try it.” Forever grateful! Our son (now) reads piles of books, college and business…thank you!!”

From Susan S:

“My daughter struggled with reading until high school and Read Right. She went on to tutor other students using the program. As a teacher, I have also used Read Right with great success. She is graduating as a teacher this year. Read Right works!”

From Tali JM:

“I used the Read Right strategies with my severely dyslexic grandson and saw wonderful results! The strategies used by Read Right do make a difference!”

Tawnee BJ:

“My daughter’s entire future was changed by Read Right. She has been accepted into a great college and has big plans and ideas for her life!”

From Susan Malone H:

“We used it at our high school for 6 years before I retired and I have never seen any method work as well as this one. Thank you, Dr. Tadlock!”

From Barbara JK:
“Your comment about loving your job and experiencing a life change was completely my experience with Read Right. I began as a tutor at an industrial site. Experiencing working with struggling adult readers, I found a mission to be part of a methodology that worked so rapidly and so successfully. I worked as a consultant with Read Right for the next 10 years, implementing programs in industry and schools from elementary to college settings, watching the students become successful readers. For me, it was a life change. Ten years later at age 83, I am thankful for Dr. Tadlock’s wisdom and her commitment to the students. It makes me proud to have had that opportunity to work with Read Right. Thank you, Dee!”

From Nancy HB:

“Dr. Tadlock, when I used your methods to work with Special Education students, I felt like I was “curing” educational cancer. They were the most satisfying and powerful years in my entire career. Read Right positively impacted every single student. I was honored to tutor. …You have changed more lives than you’ll ever know.”

From Joy W:

“Happy birthday and greetings from Eugene, OR. Your work has truly saved lives, because reading saves lives. Thank you for all you have done. You deserve the very best.”

From Sandra G:

“You enriched my life and the lives of my students.”

From Roxane P:

“As an educated, trained Reading Specialist, I 100% agree with Dr. Dee’s methodology. It works, I’ve seen it first hand. Thank you, Dr. Dee, for bringing us what the world of education needs!”

From Jill S:

“Fantastic program!”

“They Hugged Me!” — H.S. Principal

October 22, 2023

From a mother: “We can’t thank you enough!” From a grandmother volunteering her time to tutor in a school: “The teachers are so frustrated. I want to help.” And, from a retired high school principal: “It’s the only thing that ever made a former student come back to school and give me a hug. (Read Right) made all the difference.”

Teachers across the country are frustrated because huge numbers of students either (a) aren’t learning to read in Grades 1 and 2, or (b) are arriving in Grades 3 through 12 with reading problems. Why? Schools are being forced to teach reading in a manner that actually opens the door for reading problems to start.

For 40-plus years, Read Right methodology has been rapidly improving reading ability and even totally eliminating reading problems, regardless of the age of students or their disabilities. It is a myth that reading problems cannot be easily fixed after Grade 3. Yes they can–but they cannot be fixed easily through the currently popular “science of reading,” which proclaims that reading can only be taught through explicit, intensive instruction in five skills taught separately: phonemic awareness, phonics/decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

If it were true, the grateful mother of a teen with developmental disabilities mentioned above would not have emailed her gratitude for all of the progress Read Right Online Tutoring has made with her son. The volunteering grandmother would not be eager to get her hands on Read Right materials to help the struggling kindergarten and first grade students she’s working with. And the retired principal who brought Read Right to the high school that she led years ago would not be eagerly signing up her granddaughter for Read Right Online Tutoring. It wasn’t just one “hug” the retired educator received from a returning adult student. It was countless success stories her Read Right tutoring staff experienced with many students that convinced her that Read Right works. Now, she plans to entrust her granddaughter’s reading and future success to us.

Mother, grandmother, and retired school principal have two things in common today: They all contacted our offices during the same hour, and they’ve all asked why more people don’t know about Read Right methodology. Over the next few weeks this blog will explore this question. For now, just know that Read Right methodology PROVES that the popular “science of reading” is wrong. There are many “reading experts” who do not want the public to know about Read Right. Why? It threatens their credibility AND their pocketbooks.

If you know someone who has a child or who themselves is struggling with reading, please tell them about Read Right. We promise we’ll never ask them to decode a single word…and we also promise that, with Read Right, they’ll experience what reading excellence truly is.

Visit readright.com for more information.

Tyler: “I Love Reading!” (Part 2)

September 29, 2023

 For the beginning of this account, see Sept. 21’s From “I Hate Reading” to “I Love It!”

IN MONTH 4 of learning to read with Read Right methodology, my now 6-year-old grandson Tyler and I began using books that were still predictable, but less so than those we’d used in Months 1-3. Students placed in less predictable books have advanced to the stage where they begin to rely less and less on memory to “read” (actually, recite) and more on the other available information: the reader’s knowledge of language,  his background knowledge relative to the text , the role of punctuation, and the sounds associated with the stable consonants of the alphabet. At this stage, developing readers fall in and out of authentic reading, to the extent the tutor often cannot tell if they are reading, reciting, or doing a combination of the two.

This “process” of figuring out how to perform complex tasks is called procedural learning. “Reading” is not a simplistic act of decoding individual words. Decoding is no more than naming words (see Researcher Cathy Price’s work, University London College, 2003). The act of reading–or, reconstructing meaning from text–results from highly complex neural activity, requiring instantaneous integration of multiple brain systems. No one can tell a student how to do this complex work; it must be figured out by the implicitly operating brain. Read Right creates an environment that compels the brain to figure it all out. The methods simply unlock the power of the brain to do what brains do—that’s why we get the results we do. In just four months, Tyler was, indeed, “figuring out” how to reconstruct meaningful messages from print through implicitly operating complex neural processing.

IN MONTH 5, Tyler became less insistent that he hated reading, even though the books became harder! As he began to make corrections spontaneously, his confidence grew. He demonstrated that he was, indeed, figuring out how to use all available resources to help anticipate an author’s meaning. The brain’s anticipatory systems are a seldom discussed yet essential component of efficiently operating human brains. Anticipation (often associated with “predicting,” but far more accurate and efficient) creates the environment for the “auto” in the term “automatic.” Automaticity cannot happen if the human brain does not anticipate. Imagine what life would be like if, every time an individual wanted to walk across a room, they had to stop and think about all of the decisions relative to muscle movement and balance that must happen for them to complete the act. They’d likely move at the pace of sloths! Instead, without conscious thought, virtually all of us jump out of our chairs and walk to dinner. Those are anticipatory systems at work.  Tyler was beginning to read because his brain had figured out a lot about how to use anticipatory systems efficiently to reconstruct an author’s meaning. Anticipatory systems make it possible to reconstruct a printed message using minimal information from the text! Consider this: Much more than we can imagine is going on in the brain, behind the eyes, when excellent reading occurs.

IN MONTH 6, Tyler started reading upper Grade 1 books on his own, with little to no support. In fact, when told I’d read a new book to him first, he would beat me to the punch, showing off that he could read the book without my help.  

Tyler is a bright boy. Even though he’s just six, his Read Right tutoring will continue until he reads excellently, each and every time he reads. His vocabulary and understanding of concepts are sufficient to understand Grade 2 books, so that is where he will finish tutoring.

Once Read Right students become excellent readers at whatever grade-level their current knowledge base allows, they remain excellent readers for life. An excellent reader is free to “read to learn,” and no longer needs any help with reading.

Recently, I asked Tyler how he feels about reading now. His mother heard the question and gave me the definitive answer: He eagerly reads now without hesitation, an extra 20 minutes a day every day. He does it because it’s fun and he loves it.

Becoming an excellent reader, whereby the individual understands virtually everything they read and reads aloud as naturally as they talk, should be the goal of every reading program. Read Right is designed to produce reading excellence.

From ‘I Hate Reading’ to ‘I Love It!’

September 21, 2023

TYLER’S STORY–Part 1
By Rhonda Stone

My 5-year-old grandson Tyler was a whirlwind of energy. So much so that he was reluctant to sit with his older and younger siblings, parents, and grandparents while the adults read books to the kids. He’d last about five minutes before he was off and running.

Most of us know a Tyler or two. If they won’t sit still to enjoy a story, how do classroom teachers or homeschooling parents get them to sit still to learn to read?

Tyler’s case is an excellent example of an overly active child who, through participation in Read Right, successfully learned two things: 1) how to read and 2) to focus his energy on learning rather than on creating perpetual motion. In a world where ADHD diagnoses are common, how significant is that?  

Starting in March 2023 with very little phonics knowledge, Tyler was tutored an average of three days each week for 30-minute sessions. Following this schedule, by the end of August he started reading upper Grade 1 books mostly on his own. In six months Tyler became a reader and is now working with me on Grade 2 books.  

In two blogs (Part 1 and Part 2), here is Tyler’s story.

Part 1–Months 1, 2 & 3: “I HATE Reading!”

IN MONTH 1, Tyler could not demonstrate immediate recall of the 15 stable letters of the alphabet and their corresponding sounds. Read Right methodology requires that children know only the stable letters (b, d, f, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v and w). Why? An excellently reading brain only needs to sample the phonetic information on the page. Eye-movement research conducted with passages of text confirms this. (See Insight From the Eyes: The Science of Effective Reading Instruction by Eric Paulson and Ann Freeman, Heinemann: 2003.) Additional evidence that this is true comes from the 1 percent of children ages 4, 5, and 6 who figure out how to read every year without ever going to school or receiving formal instruction. Research has documented that these children do not decode because they were never provided with intensive instruction in the task. Significantly, virtually all normally developing children “figure out” many other complex processes with minimal explicit instruction (e.g., crawling, walking, and talking).

For Tyler, his energy was a problem at first. He didn’t want to sit down for 5 minutes a day in front of a computer, let alone for 30 minutes! (I tutored him from nearly 2,000 miles away via Zoom.) His daily complaint the first month was “I HATE reading!” This was followed by tears and loud protests. Read Right methodology addresses this. Every Read Right tutor (myself included) is trained how to deal with resistance. One of the things I assured him was that, as soon as he learned to automatically and correctly identify the 15 stable letters of the alphabet and their associated sounds, we’d start to work with books that I promised him he would enjoy. Reading meaningful books is a whole lot more fun and engaging for a child than endlessly mouthing the names of letters and their sounds!

IN MONTH 2, virtually every tutoring session still began with “I HATE reading!” Yet, despite his protests, he achieved automaticity with 13 of the 15 stable letters and was close to achieving automaticity with the remaining two. So, as promised, I moved him from letter sounds into highly predictable books. With these, Tyler was explicitly taught the concepts of individual printed words (blank spaces between them) and the importance of sentences for telling a story (they convey meaning, and the punctuation we use in sentences has an important job expressing meaning). He was also explicitly taught to follow the words with his eyes as I read to him. Knowing the stable letters of the alphabet and the sounds represented by each helped him do this. This is called “tracking.” It’s extremely important that young children learn to do this correctly with printed text, and it takes some children longer than others to track successfully.

Tyler continued to protest throughout the month. My consistent response: “I get it. Reading is hard at first, but keep at it. We all need to learn to read so that we can learn about lots of things and have fun in school. Do you want to have fun in school? I promise this will get easier.”

IN MONTH 3, Tyler’s protests became fewer and farther between. During month three, he became very good at following with his eyes and relying on his memory to “read” the stories back to me—another important feature of Read Right methodology. But, the better he became at tracking, the more his body seemed to wiggle in his seat while his eyes remained glued to the words on the screen. It became obvious that his wiggling was diverting his attention from focusing on what is truly important about all printed stories—the meaning. Re-construction of the author’s intended meaning in the mind of the reader requires the brain’s full attention, in order for it to figure out how to integrate strategic phonetic information with knowledge of language and knowledge of the world (anything and everything we already know that helps us understand an author’s message). As soon as I realized Tyler’s wiggling was diverting his attention, I spoke with him about the importance of learning to control his body. I told him I knew he could do it because I’d seen him work quietly and without wiggling while doing things he loved to do—like building fun things in his favorite computer games. It took many reminders during our lessons, but I held firm. He finally succeeded (most of the time)!

In Part 2 of Tyler’s Story: “I LOVE Reading!,” learn how in Months 4, 5, and 6 Tyler started reading successfully on his own. He turned 6 years old along the way, and, by early September, was 1) controlling his body appropriately every day, without reminders and 2) transformed into a boy who loves to read because reading is easy, interesting, and fun! These same things account for the allure of video games for kids. Who wouldn’t want to sit still when reading is just as easy, interesting, and fun as video games!

Meet Max–A 13-year-old Happy, Successful Reader

May 26, 2023

By Rhonda Stone
Read Right Online Tutoring Coordinator

Every educator will tell you the warmest moments on Earth come when a former student tells you, “Thank you. What you did for me made a huge difference!”

Max is one of those students. He’s 13 today, but was just 11 years old when his parents signed him up for Read Right Online Tutoring. Keep in mind: spending two hours a week after school with an online tutor is NOT how most adolescents want to spend their free time! Max made it pretty clear early on that tutoring was NOT something he wanted to do–but he’d do it, because he was told to! See his video interview here to learn how he tried to avoid reading!

It was a pleasure to work with Max. He is a determined young man who dreams of becoming an elite baseball pitcher. As soon as he figured out that Read Right was making a difference for him, he buckled down and put in the work. And, in just 10 months working with a tutor for 55 minutes two days a week, he went from “Needs Intervention” to “Average and Above Average” reader! Yay, Max!

It was my pleasure to check in with Max 18 months after he left Read Right Online Tutoring. Max and his parents gave me permission to record an interview. Did Read Right make a difference? Remarkably, Max has saved every S.T.A.R. reading test report he has been given since Grade 5–and he quickly pulled out his Grade 5 test (it was a shock to me, too; I had no idea Max is so organized!)

Max pointed out that his Grade 5 results were expressed by lots of red and yellow color bars–all indicative of a significant reading problem. And today? Max is delighted to be in the greens and blues. He officially reads above average, even though he hasn’t had a tutoring session since October 2021!

As a parent of children who once struggled with reading, a reading tutor, and the coordinator of Read Right’s Online Tutoring Program, I love that Read Right improvement grows with students, regardless of their age. The key: Students need to graduate from the Read Right Online Tutoring Program. It works–and students like Max are the reason I work with Read Right methodology!

Learning to Read’s “Dark” Secret

January 2, 2022

by Rhonda Stone
Master of Public Administration–Education Policy/Reading
Read Right Systems

The switch turns on and off, like a light in a windowless room. When it’s on, everything is seen. When it’s off, all is unseen–and whoever is in the room must feel their way through the darkness.

Learning to read is much like this. It has two distinct functions. For one function (explicit learning), the light is on and we “see” letters and words on the page. Thus, it can be easily assumed that learning the “code” (or, more specifically, how to decode every individual word using the letters on the page identified in order, from left to right) is the only path to reading success. For the other (implicit operation), the light is off and we cannot possibly see deep within the human brain and what is happening when an individual reads successfully–and unsuccessfully.

No expert who knows human brain function (neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists) would disagree that the human brain uses distinctly different neural systems to process “explicit” information (that which we can see, hear, and declare) and “implicit” operations (what our brains do to keep us both alive and constantly learning). Why, then, have reading experts completely ignored the role of implicit operation as the single most important factor in reading failure and success? The sounds that letters on the page make are easy to learn. Nudging implicit brain systems to do the right things with those sounds is what reading experts have wrong.

It is learning to read’s dark secret–and understanding how brains actually function sheds light on what the reading field is ignoring.

Becoming a successful reader is NOT about learning to decode and otherwise identify individual words. It is impossible. Neuroscience has documented that the human brain cannot process more than 3 to 7 bits of information at a time before it reaches capacity and starts all over again by wiping short-term/working memory clean! Reading is NOT about identifying every single word on a page and adding up the words to figure out the meaning. Again, adding up individual words violates the limits of brain capacity.

Becoming a successful reader IS about efficiency in complex cognitive processing. Who would argue with that? Such efficiency can only occur when the human brain figures out how to integrate multiple forms of knowledge into the singular act of making sense of text. Rather than focus on individual words, the brain MUST focus on using minimal alphabetic information to recreate the message that an author intended to communicate. Like an orchestra, these things must work together in harmony: minimal information from letters and spaces on the page; immediate recognition of punctuation and its essential contribution to meaning; instantaneous connection with a variety of knowledge already stored in the mind of the reader; and more.

Figuring out how these things work together, honestly, is IMPOSSIBLE. Figuring out how to nudge a new or struggling reader to do the right things to make complex processing happen is POSSIBLE. Read Right developer Dr. Dee Tadlock has done it and has a 40-year track record of success guiding individuals with mild to severe reading problems out of the darkness that comes with reading failure.

For our Online Tutoring Service, Read Right offers an eight-session guarantee. No one else does that. If, after eight tutoring sessions, a student does not demonstrate a reduction in symptoms as compared to the initial assessment, the client can request a refund of the eight sessions. Read Right can offer this because it works.