Laurie Dymes, PhD
NBCT · C-SLDI · UFLI Trained · 20 Years Middle Grades ELA · Lincoln County Teacher of the Year 2023
Twenty years in the classroom. Still teaching. Still testing everything I publish.
Twenty years in the classroom. Still teaching. Still testing everything I publish.
Twenty years in a middle school ELA classroom leaves marks. Not the kind that wear you down, but the kind that clarify things. What works and what does not. What sounds right in a professional development session and falls apart by third period. What students actually need versus what curriculum committees decided six years ago.
This site exists because of those 20 years. The resources here were tested on real students before they were offered to yours. The writing here reflects what a PhD, National Board Certified Teacher, and certified structured literacy and dyslexia interventionist has learned by staying in the classroom long past the point when most people with those credentials have left it.
To be straightforward about it: this is Laurie Dymes's professional platform, and it serves two purposes. The first is to share what two decades of middle school ELA practice actually teaches you about reading, writing, and the students who struggle with both. The second is to fund a retirement. Those two things are not in conflict. Great teaching deserves to compound, in classrooms, in students, and yes, in a retirement account.
Still teaching sixth grade. Not in theory. Not as a consultant. In a classroom, with real students, on Monday morning.
That matters because most of the resources available to middle school ELA teachers are built by people who used to teach, or who teach in very different contexts, or who teach at a grade level removed from the students they are writing for. Those resources are not necessarily bad. There is something different, though, about a resource built by someone who tested it last Tuesday on the actual students it was designed for.
Everything on this site was used in the classroom before it was offered to yours. That is the standard. It is not a marketing claim. It is the only way this work gets done.
Twenty years in middle school classrooms gives you a particular kind of knowledge. You know which standards teachers think they are teaching and which ones students are actually mastering. You know the difference between a resource that looks beautiful and a resource that produces results.
Twenty years gives you things to say. Some of it will be uncomfortable for people who prefer comfortable answers about reading instruction. These opinions are my own. They do not reflect the views of my employer, my school district, my university, or any organization I serve.
That is not an accident.
Teachers are not paid what they are worth. Peace has been made with that, in the way you make peace with things you cannot change while still believing they should change.
What can be done is building something that compounds. Lit n Logic is a business. It is also a body of work worth being proud of. Both things are true, and one does not diminish the other.
Some links on this site are affiliate links. When you buy something through one of those links, a small commission is earned at no cost to you. That will always be disclosed. Nothing will ever be recommended that would not be handed to a colleague on a Monday morning. The credibility built over 20 years in this work is worth more than any commission.
Research translated into plain language. Classroom-tested strategies from a teacher still in the classroom. Honest assessments of what works and what does not. Resources built because they were needed and could not be found anywhere else.
And occasionally this blog will carry something that is not about a resource or a strategy at all. Twenty years in a classroom accumulates observations worth sharing.
Welcome to Lit n Logic.