For the past seventeen years, Richard McManus has directed the Fluency Factory, a learning center in Cohasset, Massachusetts, developing instructional processes for students from pre-kindergarten through pre-college with needs ranging from dyslexia to SAT and ACT preparation. He is an active member of the Precision Teaching community, and his major interest is creating solutions for reading issues at every level.
Outside of his work Richard he has a passion for sailing and for his four amazing daughters. You can find information on his programs at www.fluencyfactory.com/
The founder of The Critical Reader and the author of a popular series of grammar and reading test-preparation guides, Erica Meltzer spent more than a decade working as a private English tutor. She developed an interest in reading problems after observing the seemingly inexplicable difficulty many of her high-achieving SAT and ACT students experienced when reading unfamiliar words and texts. What began as a series of puzzling observations in 2008 became a decade-long quest to understand how reading is taught in American schools, why it so often goes wrong, and what can be done to fix it.
Ben Tobin is a filmmaker, and a licensed special education teacher, from Western Massachusetts. A graduate of Oberlin College in Ohio, Tobin returned to Massachusetts to make documentaries about various artists living and working in the Hilltown region of the state. Ben attended the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema in Brooklyn, NY, where he majored in cinematography. A member of decoding dyslexia, most recently Ben has turned his documentary lens on the fight for a dyslexia law in Massachusetts, documenting the stories of struggling readers, and using the medium to spread awareness about what good reading instruction looks like