Catherine Cook graduated from the University of British Columbia with a double art major and an ESL concentration in 1982. Most of her positions have been in rural British Columbia teaching every grade from K to 12 and included a brief stint teaching ESL to adults at a local college.  In 1993, she completed a diploma in Library Education. She trained to be a reading Recovery teacher 13 years ago. She has been teaching grade 1 – 2 at 150 Mile House Elementary for nine years.

“My mother was able to teach my sister with autism to read and write over 50 years ago using explicit phonics, so I know all children need to know the alphabetic principles to read and write and have always included them. I struggled with using predictable texts because there were always some children who could not learn to read, despite my best efforts. Once I started my journey to the Science of Reading, I understood why there were always children left behind. Predictable readers have been replaced by decodable books in my grade one literacy program.”

Twitter: @Catheri90859348