Author Archives: Atlanta Speech School

In January 2022, Atlanta’s new Mayor Andre Dickens shared his vision to make Atlanta the best place to raise a child. This commitment to children and families in the city was especially bold, given the well-documented disparities in educational and economic access among children born in the city and resulting tragically low rates of social […]

The Rollins Center for Language & Literacy (Rollins) is partnering with state, regional and local agencies, districts, schools, businesses, and nonprofits to advance universal literacy from the 3rd trimester of pregnancy when auditory channels are forming through early learning, literacy, and building the foundations for deep reading brain construction.   These partnerships expand on Rollins�� work […]

The Rollins Center for Language & Literacy’s Cox Campus has been awarded accreditation from the International Dyslexia Association (IDA), for the Cox Campus Structured Literacy Certificate Program. This unprecedented milestone makes Cox Campus the only free, nationally accredited Structured Literacy program for educators. IDA is the gold standard educator training in Structured Literacy. Cox Campus is already […]

By Sondra Mims, retired Chief Academic Officer, after 36 years at the Atlanta Speech School Research is clear that our brains activate in concert with the experiences and characters we come to know through books. Whether it is through storybooks or great literature, our brains “feel” what the characters feel and become solution oriented when […]

By Comer Yates, Executive Director, Atlanta Speech School Just before the start of this school year, I had the privilege of serving as the closing speaker at the Alabama Early Childhood Education Conference, the theme of which was the “Measure of Tomorrow.” The new school year was on the immediate horizon, and the teachers had […]

The Nation’s Report Card from 2022, also known as the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress), confirmed the significant learning loss many of us feared in the wake of the pandemic. While this “pandemic learning loss” is disconcerting, NAEP data in 2019 (before the pandemic) revealed that most American children–across every demographic–are not proficient readers […]

By The Rollins Center for Language & Literacy  Over the next weeks, early childhood teachers will welcome a new group of children to their classrooms. Current demographics show that an increasing number of these children will be dual language or multilingual learners – children learning and developing in two or more languages.   Picture Valentina, a […]

By Rollins Center for Language & Literacy of the Atlanta Speech School Grady Memorial Hospital has redefined the standard of care for babies through a groundbreaking initiative developed and tested at Grady over the past five years called Talk With Me Baby. Devotion to the idea of “language nutrition” is at the core of Grady’s […]

By The Rollins Center for Language & Literacy Every child is born ready to learn.  As adults, it’s up to us to realize literacy and justice for all. Simple, everyday opportunities can be used to help build stronger and more capable children. Every child is born with unlimited potential, and every adult can play an […]

By Ryan Lee-James, PhD, Director of the Rollins Center for Language & Literacy and Laura Bollman, Director of Operations, the Rollins Center. Since the advent of the written word, which created the need for reading, literacy has been wielded as a tool of power and one of oppression.  Who is taught to read – and […]