Incoming IRA President Aims to Prepare Literacy Teachers to Instruct Diverse Classrooms: As a teenager in Albany, Ga., Patricia A. Edwards took the lead in teaching the younger kids in her community to read. When boys came to her father’s barbershop for haircuts she told them, “If you don’t let me teach you the alphabet, I’ll tell my daddy to give you a baldy.”
In the role she will take among the global community of teaching and literacy professionals next week, she won’t have to persuade anyone.
On April 28, at the close of its 55th annual conference in Chicago, the International Reading Association, an 80,000-member, Delaware-based organization that “teaches the world to read,” will install Dr. Edwards as its president.
As an international organization for literacy professionals, IRA provides resources and professional development activities toward disseminating best practices and lobbies Congress on policies to improve the quality of reading instruction in the U.S. and abroad.
