For Kylene Beers, the question of what to do when kids can't read surfaced abruptly in 1979 when she began teaching. That year, she discovered that some of the students in her seventh-grade language arts classes could pronounce all the words, but couldn't make any sense of the text. Others couldn't even pronounce the words. And that was the year she met a boy named George.
George couldn't read. When George's parents asked her to explain what their son's reading difficulties were and what she was going to do to help, Kylene, a secondary certified English teacher with no background in reading, realized she had little to offer the parents, even less to offer their son. That defining moment sent her on a twenty-three-year search for answers to that original question: how do we help middle and high schoolers who can't read?
Now in her critical and practical text When Kids Can't ReadWhat Teachers Can Do: A Guide for Teachers 6-12, Kylene shares what she has learned and shows teachers how to help struggling readers with
- comprehension
- vocabulary
- fluency
- word recognition
- motivation
Here, Kylene offers teachers the comprehensive handbook they've needed to help readers improve their skills, their attitudes, and their confidence. Filled with student transcripts, detailed strategies, reproducible material, and extensive booklists, this much-anticipated guide to teaching reading both instructs and inspires.
Dr. Kylene Beers is currently an international literacy consultant and previously was a Senior Reading Researcher at the Comer School Development Program at Yale University. She began her career as a middle school language arts teacher outside of Houston, TX. She is the author or co-author of many best-selling books including When Kids Can’t Read/What Teachers Can Do; Forged by Reading; Disrupting Thinking; Reading Nonfiction; and Notice and Note – Strategies for Close Reading. Disrupting Thinking, which she co-authored with Robert Probst, is a 2018 recipient of the Teachers Choice Awards.
Kylene has served on committees with the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English and is an often-invited keynote speaker to national and state conventions. She has served as president of the National Council of Teachers of English and is currently serving as a board member for the international LitWorld Foundation. She is a recipient of the NCTE Leadership Award and the NCTE Middle Grades Outstanding Teacher award.
Most importantly, Kylene is a teacher who continues to work in classrooms today across the nation as she works shoulder-to-shoulder with teachers and students. When not on an airplane, Kylene lives on her ranch with her husband, Brad, and their fabulous dog, Coda, in central Texas.
