Reading First and Beyond

Cathy Collins Block is a Professor of Education at Texas Christian University. She has taught every grade level from preschool to graduate school, and was elected to serve on the Board of Directors of the International Reading Association from 2002-2005. She has served or is presently serving on the Board of Directors of the National Reading Conference. Nobel Learning Communities, IBM Educational Board of Directors, and the National Center for Learning Disabilities. She presently serves on the Editorial Boards for the Journal of Educational Psychology, Reading Research Quarterly, The Reading Teacher, National Reading Conference Yearbook, and America Tomorrow. She has written more than 30 books and 80 research-based articles relative to literacy instruction and teacher education. She has also served or is serving on several elementary/middle school authorial writing teams for public/private school textbooks and literacy curriculum materials. She has written for Walt Disney Corporation, PBS Television Stations and other national media companies. She has received numerous honors as a teacher, including Who's Who Among America's Teachers and Who's Who in the World.

Susan E. Israel is an independent researcher, writer, and literacy consultant and currently serves as President and Director of Reading Alliance for Catholic Education in Indiana, where she works with small and large corporations to enhance literacy products. Her special research interests are in the areas of reading comprehension, writing, and child-mind development as it relates to literacy processes. Israel served as assistant professor at the University of Dayton, and in 2005 she was awarded the University's Panhellenic Council Outstanding Professor Award. She has also served on the national faculty at the University of Notre Dame Summer Program, where she taught reading and language arts methods. A former elementary teacher, she was awarded the 1998 teacher-researcher grant from the International Reading Association (IRA). Having been an active member of the IRA for over a decade, she has served on a number of IRA committees and interest groups and recently was president of the History of Literacy Special Interest Group. In addition, she has been active with the National Reading Conference. Israel has authored, coauthored, or edited over 15 books and volumes and is the senior editor of the recently published comprehensive volume, Handbook of Research on Reading Comprehension (Israel & Duffy, 2008). Other recent publications include Teachers Taking Action: A Comprehensive Guide to Teacher Research (with Cynthia Lassonde, 2008), Reading First and Beyond (with Cathy Collins Block, 2005), Collaborative Literacy (2006), Shaping the Reading Field (2007), Poetic Possibilities (2006), and Quotes to Inspire Great Reading Teachers (2006).