Elizabeth Alexander Of The Alexander Reading Method On The 5 Things Parents Can Do To Help Their Children Thrive and Excel In School
An Interview With Jake Frankel
Start with teaching letter rec and sounds in pre-K. Get our Expressive Letters and practice. Be silly and bubbly and have fun with it. (Sometimes we have clients who buy our products but aren’t great with the sounds themselves so they’ll call in and ask us to record our voice showing the visuals of the cards, so they know how to teach it correctly.)
School is really not easy these days. Many students have been out of school for a long time because of the pandemic, and the continued disruptions and anxieties are still breaking the flow of normal learning. What can parents do to help their children thrive and excel in school, particularly during these challenging and anxiety-provoking times?
To address this, we started a new series called ‘5 Things Parents Can Do To Help Their Children Thrive and Excel In School.” In this interview series, we are talking to teachers, principals, education experts, and successful parents to learn from their insights and experience.
As a part of this interview series, I had the pleasure to interview Elizabeth Alexander.
Growing up, Elizabeth was fascinated with early childhood development and having fun with children. She was passionate about helping them fall in love with reading from the young age of two and three. Later in life, she moved to New York City and continued to work with young children while taking Early Childhood Development and General Childhood Education courses. Over time, Elizabeth began to understand the deficiencies in the earlier grades in American schools. After five years of research of many types of reading programs used in America and around the world, whilst continuing to gain experience with teaching children between the ages of two to eight years old to read, Elizabeth founded “Reading in Preschool” and developed “The Alexander Reading Method.”
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us a bit about your “backstory”?
I was born in Monte Carlo, Monaco. I’m the second eldest of 9 children. My siblings and I were homeschooled while our family lived first in Europe and then in South America (Peru & Brazil). At the young age of 2, my father, who had a passion for reading and early education, began teaching me to read using a phonics-based British curriculum. My earliest memories include diving into whole new worlds through books while reading on my own. While developing a variety of skills as a teenager, I became fascinated with early childhood development and having fun with children. In my spare time I was passionate about helping children fall in love with reading from the young age of 2 & 3. Any child I worked with became avid readers from this young age. As a young adult, I spent a year with the Red Cross doing volunteer work in West Africa. From there I moved to New York City and continued to work with young children while taking Early Childhood Development and General Childhood Education courses. Over time, I began to understand the deficiencies in the earlier grades in American schools. After five years of research of many types of reading programs used in America. and around the world, whilst continuing to gain experience with teaching children between the ages of 2.5–8 to read, I founded Reading in Preschool and developed The Alexander Reading Method. 15 years later, the company has expanded from being in one state to having teachers and students in 7 different U.S. locations. Online lessons are also offered internationally to children ages 4 and up. I am passionate about using a multi-sensory approach. I believe this is the platform for success in life. I spend most of my time now creating products that inspire children to fall in love with learning and reading. I am a keen advocate of nutrition and mental health awareness. I speak three languages, love dance, music, traveling, and am a lover of a variety of sports.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I had been teaching small groups of children with much success, and many parents telling me I needed to start a company to help more children. It wasn’t until I met a little girl who was going into kindergarten, who was very shy. She would cry at drop-off UNTIL I taught her to read. From then on, she would walk confidently into her school, book under arm, teachers reporting that she was becoming more and more confident, and that the other children who couldn’t read yet would cozy up to her. So, she went from a shy, reserved young girl to the popular kid in class. That touched my heart so much that I decided to start the company, after already having a good 10 years of teaching/tutoring young children under my belt. I learned how powerful knowing how to read can be, and how much confidence that one skill can offer you, not only when you’re young but when you’re older as well.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Good things don’t often come easy. Never give up, and don’t second guess your intuition.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
- It’s okay to need help and not know everything already. I tried to be a teacher, the creative team, the accounting team, thinking it would be cheaper. In the long run I ended up needing to hire the right people for all the different areas, trusting that the money would come to support the ideas.
- Trust that good, honest people will come along to help you, and don’t second guess or micromanage them. I had the best teacher in the beginning, and although I would give her all the good jobs, I always had the feeling she was going to try to steal my ideas (because it almost happened a few years before). She felt my distrust and ended up leaving.
- Be adaptable. There are constant changes and decisions that need to be made when you run a company. In the beginning, I would be adamant about trying to keep things as is, and I’d struggle when that didn’t work. Now when something happens unexpectedly, I say “It is what it is. We’ll work hard to find a great replacement and what’s meant to be will work out.” It’s not easy, but it is EASIER.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
Yes! We are always coming up with solutions to current problems out there, to make learning easier for the children. First off, every one of our products has several unique features that we know engage children more, which in turn helps them to retain the info faster since it’s fun! For the longest time, I have wanted to add a new spelling method I created a few years ago but have waited to put it into a product. There are some children who have real difficulty learning to spell words that cannot be sounded out. We will have a fun way to help retain those tricky spelling words! I have also written a 20 min x 26 series that would bring the letters program from The Alexander Reading Method to life. It is fun and animated. If there is a philanthropist out there that wants to help fund some of these products so they don’t have to sit on the shelf until we find funding, we want to meet you!!
For the benefit of our readers, can you tell us a bit about why you are an authority on how to help children succeed in school?
About 20 years ago I became passionate about seeing children succeed with reading. I didn’t understand why so many children in NYC who were in amazing schools were failing with reading. I did a few years of research, studying the programs that were out there, and immediately realized where the disconnects were. I spent a long time creating and working on The Alexander Reading Method. After seeing the success of my own students, and the reactions of the parents who were ecstatic when they received their schools’ report saying the children were now grade levels ahead, I knew I was ready. We have only ever worked through word of mouth for the past 10 years which means a lot, and we have a steady 98% success rate. I’m very proud of the teachers who are now trained in my method for helping us teach as many children as we can.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the main focus of our interview. Can you help articulate the main challenges that students face today that make it difficult to succeed in school?
1) Nothing is taught in preschool.
2) Mostly sight words are memorized in kindergarten.
3) By 1st grade, children are given 3 grade levels of information and expected to be fully reading chapter books fluently by 2nd grade.
– Because no child can learn that amount of knowledge with a few grades, children then struggle with 3rd grades and above where teachers have moved on to writing and other subjects, expecting children to already have reading skills.
4)They also teach reading with an emphasis on memorizing, rather than taking their time teaching children read phonetically, a huge component to learning to read.
5) A lot of children also need one-on-one attention to learn. If they are learning to read in groups in school where other children might be overpowering them and answering all the questions, those children fall behind.
– The Alexander Reading Method has benchmarks to ensure that children, starting from pre-K, go into each grade ahead, so that they can continue to learn more and more and show confidence in school.
Can you suggest a few reforms that you think schools should make to help students to thrive and excel?
Adopt The Alexander Reading Method, starting in pre-K or at least in kindergarten to give them a fighting change in 1st and 2nd grade.
Can you please share your “5 Things Parents Can Do To Help Their Children Thrive and Excel In School?” Please share a story or example for each.
#1: Start with teaching letter rec and sounds in pre-K. Get our Expressive Letters and practice. Be silly and bubbly and have fun with it. (Sometimes we have clients who buy our products but aren’t great with the sounds themselves so they’ll call in and ask us to record our voice showing the visuals of the cards, so they know how to teach it correctly.)
#2: By the age of 4 1/2 your child should know all the letters (upper and lowercase plus the sounds). Your child can jump to our Level 1 — CVC — three letter word, phonetic level of workbooks that are easy to use from home. (Schools tell parents their children are fine when really, we all know instinctively when we notice children the same age ahead. Listen to your intuition and use a phonics, proven based program like ours to give your child a leg up.)
#3 While you’re doing all this, make sure to include reading learning time into a visual schedule, and give rewards at the end of each achievement. (Star charts work! Give praise always for effort.)
#4) From an early age, children want to copy what adults do, and if they can’t, they become very frustrated and want to give up. Tell them stories about times where you made a mistake but learned that that’s how you get to where you want to be, and it’s important not to give up! Buy kids’ books like “Perfect Ninja” that tell children’s stories about how making mistakes is great! (This is something we incorporate into our lessons for children who take longer to learn. It’s not just a one-off thing. You’ll need to stay on top of reminders, if you see your child needs it.)
#5) Children think of their parents as “gods” who they don’t want to disappoint. If you have a grandmother or someone else at home who can teach your child, sometimes that works better to help the child gain confidence, and then the child loves to show off to you what she knows now.
As you know, teachers play such a huge role in shaping young lives. What would you suggest needs to be done to attract top talent to the education field?
When I hire, I look for:
- Teachers who are kind, bubbly and creative.
- Teachers who can stay patient with the more difficult, behavioral children who need so much more attention.
- Don’t hire a new teacher with no experience, just because the degree is great. A degree means nothing without the right personality and experience.
We are blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
Whoever are the top game changers in the nation, making a real difference, who aren’t scared to rock the boat. I’ve always said that if the US adopted our program and followed our benchmarks, we could change the trend of the US being so behind statistically in reading. Philanthropists that have passion for helping children and who want to see those literacy numbers changing too.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Instagram: @readinginpreschool
Websites: www.readinginpreschool.com & www.thealexanderreadingmethod.com
Thank you so much for these insights! This was so inspiring!
Elizabeth Alexander Of The Alexander Reading Method On The 5 Things Parents Can Do To Help Their… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.