Hello, dear visitors to our website!
My name is Irina, and I am the founder of the educational program "Read to Succeed." Let me tell you how it all started a couple of years ago.
Back then I was working as a college professor teaching writing, critical thinking, and American literature classes to undergraduate students. While doing this, I witnessed that many of my students were struggling with the assignments they got. Why? Because there was a huge gap between the requirements they had been used to in school and what was expected from them in a college environment.
Starting a new semester of my writing class, I would ask my students one and the same question: "How many paragraphs should there be in an essay?" And I knew exactly what kind of answer I would get. Five. "What if I want to write six or seven? Would it be a mistake?". The students got confused, and it wasn't their fault as they were simply repeating what they had been told before. The idea that there should be enough paragraphs to make the central message of the essay clear and interesting for the target audience was a revelation. They were used to numbers, patterns, and rules, and having none, they felt as if they were losing steady ground behind their feet.
Being a linguist and the person who in order to get a doctorate degree spent years studying the laws of written communication, I was determined to share my views on writing. "It's a form of art," I told my students, " and it has its own rules, but they have nothing to do with the number of sentences in a paragraph. Sometimes, in order to create a great piece of writing, you might break all the rules, but you have to master them first." There were so many things I wanted to share and very little time that I had on my hands.
So I told myself that I want to work with young minds that are still very open to new things and flexible, and I want to help them grow into good writers, brilliant thinkers, and enthusiastic readers.
Fortunately, I was lucky to find colleagues who happen to be on the same wavelength, and so off we go, ready for new adventures!
Hope we will see you and your kids join us!
Best,
Irina Frisher
