Our Passion for Re-Imaging Reading Comprehension
Donna Olson is the author of and lead researcher for the ReadThinkRemember Comprehension System and Reading Comprehension Research Project. Donna earned a B.S in Upper Elementary Education from the University of Northern Iowa and an M.S in Training and Organization Development from Chapman College. A lifelong educator, her experience is broad and deep. She has taught grades K-8, operated a preschool, taught in a bilingual environment, been a children's librarian, and traveled to 38 states and four foreign countries to deliver business seminars.
In elementary school, she decided to become a 4th-grade teacher. For six years, she specialized in teaching 4th graders who were struggling with reading. She noted that each year she taught, the children's reading ability at the beginning of the year ranged from 1st-grade level to 8th-grade level. That unusual statistic stayed with her, and she noted there seemed to be no change through the years.
She chose her degree in upper elementary education because it has often been said in K-3, you learn to read, then 4-8 you read to learn. She wanted to teach children to learn about important things in science, social studies, etc., and to think, talk and write about them—just what ESSEA requires now. Unfortunately, she spent most of her time trying to get children to understand “how” to read.
About 15 years ago, she began to look into what was happening in the teaching of reading in Northern California Schools. She joined the California Reading Association and became a featured speaker at two conferences. She visited the curriculum publishers’ exhibits and heard the speakers but found none of the band-aids that came along actually seemed to work to resolve the systemic reading comprehension problem.
