Alice Nine, a freelance educational consultant and author, has a tenacious focus on literacy. Many of her practical, common sense strategies, founded on research-based procedures, are not new but revised from 19th century language textbooks.

In the 1980s, Alice Nine began searching for a more effective way to teach language skills. Her search led her back in history to teachers who more than 100 years ago did so much with so little. As a result, she increased her own personal knowledge of English, made dramatic changes in her method of teaching it, and secured success for her students.

Out of her personal experiences, a desire to help other teachers secure the same success for their students was conceived. As she shared her knowledge and experiences, this desire gave birth to Johnny Can Spell & Johnny Can Write.

Since 1990, Alice Nine has traveled nationally and internationally to conduct hundreds of workshops and countless in-services, awareness sessions, and convention presentations. During this time, she has written Johnny Can Spell Teacher’s Guide, Johnny Can Write Teacher’s Guide, the Johnny Can Spell & Write Lesson Planner Series, and Johnny Can Spell & Write Word Analyses Series. Thousands of teachers use her materials as part of their language arts program.

A teacher of teachers, Alice Nine shares from her wealth of knowledge and personal experiences as a teacher, administrator, consultant, parent, and grandparent. Teachers and parents leave her dynamic, fast-paced workshops not only challenged but also equipped to make a deeper commitment to excellence in education and to their own abilities to contribute to the lives of our children. Attending one of her workshops will revolutionize your teaching forever.

Alice Nine earned a bachelor of science degree in elementary education from Evangel University, Springfield, Missouri, and a master of science degree in education administration from Portland State University, Oregon.

In her own words…

It was 1988, and I was teaching a multi-grade primary class in a small inner-city private school. Two years prior I had attended a workshop based on the text The Writing Road to Reading (Romalda Bishop Spalding and Walter Spalding), and as a result, I was teaching spelling according to the Spalding method. My students were excelling in reading and spelling. However, their composition continued to be leass than satisfactory.

That year, as I taught composition, I began to realize that my knowledge about the semantic and syntactic systems of English was as lacking as it had been about the phonological system. I also began to realize that it was my own lack that was stunting the level of achievement in my class. Now, that is an earth-shaking realization for a good teacher who loves teaching and cares about her students.

Thus, I was thrust upon a quest to know more about English. I turned first to current teacher materials but without satisfactory results. That which I was seeking had been eliminated without any reference, was scoffed at as unnecessary, or was such a watered-down version it was sure to produce failure. Then, I turned to the dusty pages of language textbooks from another century. During the next two years I unearthed over thirty language textbooks that had been used in schools during the 19th century, the oldest of which is a leather-bound 1836 edition of Murray’s English Grammar Simplified. In the pages of those books, I found what I was seeking.

As I studied concrete information about English, I also read about teaching strategies, and I began to have a new vision of the educational process that could be possible in my classroom. I began to envision teaching that was free from the canned curriculum of workbooks and worksheets. I knew that the teachers who had used these old language books had worked with limited teaching supplies consisting of a slateboard, chalk, some paper and pens, and a few books. As I studied their textbooks I realized that if they had been able to teach without mountains of worksheets, so could I. If I knew the language–not just how to use it but about it, then books, paper, and pencils were the only supplies I really needed. That idea appealed to me because I have always disliked what I call the management of paper in the classroom–running off thirty copies of the worksheet, passing out the worksheet, collecting the worksheet, hunting for Johnny’s lost worksheet, marking the worksheet, returning the worksheet, passing out stickers for the great worksheets, telling students to take the worksheet home, picking the rumpled worksheet off the floor and throwing it into a trash can filled with worksheets.

I also noticed that the 19th century textbooks were un-graded. At most, they were divided into beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels. Instead of raising our student achievement levels, our grade-level curriculum and mastery checklists have actually lowered them. The downward spiral of low expectations created by such grade leveling has swept teachers along with it, and they have became both the product and the perpetrator of it. And so, I began to dare to believe that a first grade student could learn anything I could teach him.

With that, I also realized that I, the teacher, was a primary factor affecting the success of my students. I could not look to the child’s abilities or disabilities. I could not look to his socioeconomic environment. I could not look to the expectations of his parents. I could not look to the failures that he had experienced. I must look to myself. And in looking to myself, I must judge my teaching methods. I must judge my expectations. I must judge my knowledge of the content. I must judge my mastery of the skills. As I did, I was challenged to revise methods, to master skills, to raise expectations, and to expand my knowledge of the content. The result? I changed and so did my students.

I firmly believe that the language systems must be directly taught to and practiced by primary students. The teaching and practicing must not be done solely in isolated drill but must involve integrated application. Practice must be guided and continued throughout the primary grades until automaticity is achieved. Then, and only then, will our students surpass us their teachers. Then, and only then, will we teachers know true success, for the successful teacher is measured by the number of his students that surpass him.

Alice Tabor Nine