Julie Vanlier

Julie VanLier has been teaching for 23 years in southwest Michigan., the majority of the time in kindergarten. Although she has her early childhood endorsement, a master’s in education, and an additional 30 credit hours of instruction, she was quite perplexed when she was trained in EBLI, and it went against everything she had ever been taught about how kids learn to read.

Julie now believes so passionately in Structured Linguistic Literacy that she gives up her “specials” (the then when her kinders are at music, art, and gym) to voluntarily tutor older kids at her school who are subliterate. Her favorite thing about helping struggling readers learn to read is the way their eyes light up when they realize that sounds are spelled with one, two, three, or four letters and that English is a code that can be cracked.