[Testimonial] Filling the Middle School Professional Learning Gap

When middle school educators in Bettendorf, Iowa, saw their elementary school peers benefiting from Lexia® LETRS® Professional Learning, they started asking for a similar training for themselves.

“The middle school [educators] saw what the elementary was going through and what they were learning and where that was taking them as a team, they just started asking for it,” Rhonda Nelson, the district’s curriculum instruction and assessment coordinator, says in this video. “They just really saw a gap there that they were missing some learning that they wished they’d had.”

Bettendorf educators have a long history with Lexia® solutions, including the use of Lexia® Core5® Reading and LETRS. So, incorporating Lexia Aspire® Professional Learning for 23 of the district’s middle school educators was a logical step.

Aspire is science of reading-based professional learning geared for grades 4–8 educators. Accredited by the International Dyslexia Association®, Aspire empowers all educators to accelerate literacy skills among their students.

For the district’s middle school educators, including classroom ELA teachers, academic interventionists, special education teachers, and instructional coaches, Aspire’s focus on the application of the science of reading really resonated.  

“Teacher-focused learning about reading science has been hugely beneficial,” Nelson says. “And in Aspire, with the application pieces, [it] has just been really well received, and that’s not always an easy group to win over.“

Watch this video to learn how Aspire is empowering Iowa middle school educators to help their students make the critical shift from learning to read to reading to learn.