In this personal narrative, Lois Letchford recounts a 1995 case study of her son Nicholas, who failed first grade and could read only ten words. Traditional decoding programs (Success for All) caused intense emotional pain for both mother and child. Prompted by her mother‑in‑law’s advice to make learning fun, Lois shifted focus to engagement, creating simple rhyming poems for Nicholas. The poems sparked daily successes, igniting imagination and curiosity, which in turn fostered purposeful decoding skills. This breakthrough transformed Nicholas’s reading trajectory and Lois’s own life, leading her to become a reading teacher for other struggling students. She shares her methods through her book, website, and invites viewers to support vulnerable readers.
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Hello, I'm Lois Letchford, author of the book Reversed Memoir and literacy problem solver, talking about why pain and purpose are the secret ingredient to reading success. My story is one of going from pain to purpose. The story began in 1995, so it's actually a long-term case study. 1995, when my son Nicholas failed first grade. His failure was dramatic. He could— did nothing in school. His teacher shouted at him. He failed. At the end of grade 1, he could read 10 words and showed no strengths. I had the opportunity to remove him from school for 6 short months. The 6 short months turned into 4 months. And I started thinking, decoding, decoding, decoding with a series of books called Success for All. They were a disaster, enormous pain within me, within my chest, within my heart, with dealing with Nicholas. He's not getting it. He's not getting it. But it was my mother-in-law's words, Lois, put away what is not working and make learning fun. That caused me to stop and rethink. And when you're on that position, in that position where you cannot, you cannot go down that path of pain again, rethink. It caused me to open a new box. It caused me to say, what else do I have to do? And the first thing you have to do when a child struggles so much. And they are gaining nothing. First is engagement. Irrespective of what you're doing, it's engagement. And what I did was I started to write simple poems. The simple rhyming poems were enough to have success on one day. That success on one day, the enjoyment, the excitement of learning transformed our classroom. Instantly. There's no magic in reading, but having a success on one day led me to repeat that success the next day. Write another poem. Read another poem to him. Find the rhyming words. Find the— find the idea behind the poem. Then illustrate it. They ended up being all foundational skills And a part of a learning which actually transformed not only my son's life, but my life too, because I could see the difference. When I changed the teaching for Nicholas, I changed the outcomes for both him and for me. And that's how it started. It did start with pain. But when you've got pain, you also come up with no excuses. There's there's no more excuses. You failed and you failed. What else am I going to do next? So you end up with this little thing, this little idea that grows as a seed. And believe it or not, once you start planting little seeds, they do grow, and their growth. It ends up being exponential. And when I started with Nicholas, with our little poems, simple rhyming poems, and the poems are in my book and they're on my website in loislatchford.com, you don't see the depth of where Nicholas ended up. And what I started to do was started to tap into 2 things, tap into his imagination and his curiosity. And it's both those things, imagination and curiosity, that led to a purpose. Because in the process of doing that, you're learning decoding along the way. We've switched from just teaching decoding to let's tap into his curiosity. Let's tap into his imagination. And that is what was transformative and led to the success for not only my son Nicholas, because I went on to become a reading teacher for many other children who had failed, but for those students too. So thank you. Hit like, hit subscribe, and follow my journey. And let's transform reading instruction for For our most vulnerable students. Thank you.
