Joanne Coggins earned her Ph.D. in Literacy Studies at Middle Tennessee State University and her M. Ed. in Secondary Education at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. At the University of South Carolina's Honors College in Columbia, she earned her B.A. in English with a Spanish minor. She has two decades of experience teaching in TItle 1 schools; and subject matter expertise and teaching certifications in Spanish, ELA, ESL, and special education. While her aim is to improve literacy across the spectrum, necessarily, her focus is on early grades (K-5) reading improvement and identification of at-risk learners.
Adding to the peer-reviewed corpus of the research studies collectively known as the "Science of Reading," Dr. Coggins' recent and ongoing research studies have shown that Readable English is a particularly effective reading intervention for middle and high school students with significant reading difficulties. The program's novel approach to scaffolding structured literacy with comprehension strategies has exciting implications for the remediation of post-elementary students with reading disabilities, particularly students with dyslexia.
Extensive training in, and use of, Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes, Inc. reading fluency and reading comprehension interventions characterize Dr. Coggins’ elementary experience. Research studies at MIT, Yale, and Harvard have found that using these interventions can activate inactive areas of the brain in children with reading disabilities/dyslexia. Using these intensive interventions, students who had not significantly benefited from traditional teaching techniques showed dramatic improvement in reading abilities.
A passionate believer that all students can succeed and become valuable community members, Dr. Coggins works with school districts, universities, trade schools, and educational companies around the world to create programs that provide functional literacy, promote internships, and create viable pathways to training and the work force. Dr. Coggins continues to teach primary and secondary students, as well as adult learners to read and write. She finds that using trauma informed teaching techniques to engage students of all ages is critical to successfully accessing their learning.