Episode #100: Empowering Striving Readers and Writers with Laura Robb

Laura Robb, an author, teacher, coach, and speaker who has completed more than 43 years of teaching in grades 4-8 and has written more than 25 books for teachers. She presently coaches teachers in reading/writing workshop at Powhatan School in Virginia and coaches teachers in grades K-8 in Staunton, Virginia, Long Island, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, and West Nyack, New York. Her latest books that she wrote with Evan Robb (her son) are TeamMakers and School Full of Readers.<br /><br />Your background <br />I came to teaching very unexpectedly. I never had any education classes when I went to Queens College as part of the University of New York. I majored in English and French Lit and then got married. My husband, a singer, and a voice instructor went to Julliard which was expensive even on a scholarship. I was writing copy for an ad agency in the city and then I got a job teaching without an education background. That’s when I realized that the best teachers were the children. If I had the courage to ask them what was going well and what was going wrong to find out what they needed, I was learning and growing. I began to read a lot of professional books for teachers. That first year I taught sixth grade in a little country school, it won my heart. That’s when the story of my life really began.<br />Your work now as a reading teacher and coach<br />For the last four years, my focus is to work with kids in the public schools who are reading 3 or more years below grade level. My first year of teaching was in 1963. I did not get a master’s in education until 1987. I had both of my children, Evan and my daughter, Enina who did teaching with Teach for America. I decided that my children had to be my number one priority. Self-learning is more important than ever. I’m glad I got my master’s but I would say my children taught me a lot and they still do every day. <br />What was fortunate for me, was my granddaughter, who was dyslexic asked me to work with her. In third grade, she was reading at a first-grade level. She was re