Interview w/ Maryanne Wolf

Dr. Maryanne Wolf is a scholar, a teacher, and an advocate for children and literacy around the world. She is the Director of the newly created Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. Previously she was the John DiBiaggio Professor of Citizenship and Public Service and Director of the Center for Reading and Language Research in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development at Tufts University. She is the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain (2007), Dyslexia, Fluency, and the Brain (2001), Tales of Literacy for the 21st Century (2016), and Reader Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World (2018).

Dr. Wolf’s many awards include the highest honors from International Dyslexia Association and The Dyslexia Foundation; Distinguished Researcher of the Year for Learning Disabilities in Australia; Distinguished Teacher of the Year from the American Psychological Association; and the Christopher Columbus Award for Intellectual Innovation for co-founding Curious Learning: A Global Literacy Initiative, with deployments in Africa, India, Australia, and rural United States. She is also the recipient of The Reading League’s Benita Blachman award in honor of her extraordinary contributions to literacy. Finally, Maryanne has been elected to the Vatican Academy of Science.

Today’s sponsor is Reading Horizons. Reading Horizons programs deliver proven supplemental core literacy instruction, based on the science of reading. The Reading Horizons podcast, named Podclassed, takes a deep dive into learning-focused topics such as structured literacy, social-emotional learning, dyslexia, and ed-tech with host, Laura Axtell—an educator and trainer with over 26 years of experience in instructional and administrative settings. Visit readinghorizons.com/podcast to learn more.

Further Reading and Exploration

• Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf
• Dyslexia, Fluency, and the Brain by Maryanne Wolf
• Tales of Literacy for the 21st Century by Maryanne Wolf
• Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in the Digital World by Maryanne Wolf
• The Coming Literacy Crisis: There’s No Going Back to School as We Know It by Comer Yates, Renee Boynton-Jarrett, and Maryanne Wolf

Maryanne’s Picks

• Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter Are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life By James Martin
• The writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• The writings of Father John S. Dunne
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• Noam Chomsky and Carol Chomsky
• Jeanne Chall
• How We Read Now by Naomi S. Baron
• Crash Landing on You (Television series; Netflix)
• Find Yourself (Television series; Netflix)