International literacy consultant, author, and speaker — thought partner for schools in the thick of real literacy change.
Including the landmark Shifting the Balance series — practical guidance for bringing the science of reading into the classroom without overcorrecting.
There's no single way to work together. Some schools begin with a one-time keynote or workshop; others want a literacy audit that opens onto demonstration lessons, coaching rounds, and ongoing leadership support. Most engagements combine several of these, sequenced to match where your literacy work is now and where you want it to go.
Every engagement is shaped in conversation — never a fixed package dropped onto your school. Offered in-person or virtually, unless marked * in-person only.
Systems-level analysis through classroom visits and leadership conversations. Schools walk away with a clear picture of strengths, gaps, and an actionable roadmap.
Take the 2-minute self-check →Half-day, full-day, or multi-day professional learning rooted in current reading research. Also available as conference keynotes for districts or events.
Live teaching with real students, paired with a structured debrief. Helps teachers see new strategies in action and translate them into their own classrooms.
Job-embedded coaching cycles built on observation, reflection, and collaborative planning — the piece that turns PD that informs into PD that actually changes practice.
Strategic support for administrators, coaches, and literacy leaders navigating curriculum decisions, intervention alignment, and implementation planning.
Most schools begin with a conversation about what they're seeing — and we shape the engagement from there.
Begin the conversation →Jan's particular gift is helping schools take on their confirmation bias — naming the gaps, overlaps, and tensions inside a literacy system that are almost impossible to see from within it.
That kind of clarity asks for candor and a little courage — a willingness to question the status quo and to say honestly what is and isn't working, without blame. Jan does it while honoring the people inside the system as the thoughtful professionals they are. The goal is never to be right; it's to help a school see itself clearly and decide, together, what comes next.
From 90-minute virtual workshops to multi-day learning events — and everything in between — sessions flex to fit your timeframe, your team, and the context you're working in.
Jan's gift is translating the science of reading into accessible insights and practical, next-Monday application. Every workshop is engaging and interactive — built on real classroom artifacts, honest conversation, and the sense that everyone in the room is doing the thinking together.
As the science of reading sharpens our focus on decoding, a pressing question returns: where does comprehension actually come from, and how do we teach it on purpose? The session explores how readers build and revise mental models as they read — through inferencing, knowledge- and vocabulary-building, attention, and discussion.
A synthesis of the most essential ideas from the Shifting the Balance books, across K–5 — language comprehension, automatic word recognition, vocabulary and knowledge, attention and memory. The emphasis stays practical: what each looks like in daily instruction, and why attending to all five together is what moves readers.
What actually goes in the literacy block — and when. Practical models for budgeting minutes across foundational skills, knowledge-building, and authentic reading and writing, so the day's parts stay connected rather than fractured into isolated routines.
How to evaluate and select decodable texts that match a student's developing orthographic knowledge while still supporting comprehension and engagement. Participants leave with a clear, usable set of criteria — so choosing a text becomes a deliberate decision, not a guess.
Vocabulary is one of the strongest engines of comprehension — and one of the most under-taught. This session moves beyond word lists to intentional, generative instruction: choosing the right words, teaching them deeply, and building the semantic networks that let students understand what they read.
Explores the reciprocal relationship among vocabulary, background knowledge, comprehension, reading, writing, and discussion. Participants examine how connected texts and content-rich talk help students build the semantic networks that deep comprehension requires.
How to design text sets that build knowledge and stir genuine engagement — pairing fiction and nonfiction around a topic so information and emotion reinforce each other. Participants learn to sequence texts that grow understanding while keeping students invested in why it matters.
How students move from slow, effortful decoding toward automatic, flexible word recognition. Through reading behaviors and spelling approximations, participants see how words become “known” in the brain — and how phonics, spelling, and meaningful reading work together to speed that journey.
Fluency is too often reduced to speed — and too often skipped. This session reclaims it as the bridge between accurate word reading and comprehension, and shows why leveraging it well is more nuanced than timed, words-per-minute routines — attending to phrasing, expression, and meaning, not just rate.
Examines the patterns common to upper-elementary striving readers — fragile word recognition, limited language comprehension, weak semantic networks, cognitive overload. Connects assessment to coherent intervention within an MTSS framework, so interventions integrate foundational skills with authentic reading and writing rather than fragmenting into disconnected parts.
Don't see what you need? Most sessions can be combined or tailored — just ask.
Customized learning designed around the unique strengths, goals, challenges, and instructional realities of your school or district. Sessions are built collaboratively to support coherence, sustainability, and meaningful growth over time — the ideal way to follow a literacy audit with professional development that truly aligns with what your school needs next.
“What sets Jan apart is that she listens first. She doesn't arrive with a script — she arrives with curiosity and leaves us with clarity.”
“The professional development was an incredible learning experience for ALL staff. Everyone walked away inspired and with next steps.”
“Grounded in research, delivered with heart, and full of practical wisdom. This experience helped us sharpen our focus and commit to meaningful change.”
“Jan's insight and keen eye for nuance helped us have meaningful, honest dialogue. Her forthright way was exactly what we wanted.”
“Powerful, personalized learning made this PD stand out. Teachers walked away inspired, with ideas they could immediately apply.”
A printable look at services, signature topics, and ways to work together — handy for sharing with a team or leadership.
A thought partner for schools in the thick of real literacy change.
Jan began as a classroom teacher and went on to serve as a literacy coach, a district literacy leader, and a regional literacy consultant for the state of Georgia. Today she works alongside schools across the United States and internationally.
She earned her doctorate at the University of Kansas, where her dissertation — a meta-analysis of the research on phonemic awareness — was named the School of Education's Dissertation of the Year and a national finalist for the International Literacy Association's outstanding dissertation award. She is the author and co-author of ten-plus books for educators, including the Shifting the Balance series.
Tell me what you're seeing in your classrooms and what you're hoping to build.
Every engagement starts here.
Typically responds within two business days.
Each year, Jan accepts only a small number of multi-year partnerships — two- to three-year engagements that turn one-time learning into lasting, system-wide change. Because the work goes deep, each cohort is deliberately small, so that every partner school has her sustained attention from the first audit to the final handoff.
A comprehensive literacy audit, leadership planning, and the first cycles of professional learning — a clear, shared picture of where you are and where you're headed.
Coaching cycles, grade-level collaboration, and curriculum and assessment alignment — with coaching focused on transfer into everyday practice.
Leadership calibration, coaching for your internal literacy leaders, and a gradual release — so the work outlives the partnership.
There's only space for a handful of schools to join . . . This is a deeper way of working together — a multi-year arc for schools that want their literacy efforts to pull in one direction over time. It rests on a simple idea: coherent, sustained work tends to take root in ways that one-off PD can't. Partners get priority on Jan's calendar and a continuity that single engagements don't allow. If that's the kind of work you're hoping to do, let's start a conversation.
