I have watched a child decode their first real word. Not guess it. Not memorize it. Actually decode it, hear the sounds, blend them together, and read a word they have never seen before with their own eyes. The look on that child's face is something I will never forget. It is not just academic progress, it is a child discovering that they are capable, that they are not broken, that reading was never the problem, the way they were being taught was. I spent seven years as a lit