Grad Ed Student Accomplishments

Eileen Catizone, Author of Just Right Phonological Awareness, Alumni of the Reading Specialist program at Gordon College

"The education, knowledge, and experience I received in the Reading Specialist graduate program at Gordon College put me notches ahead of my reading colleagues. I then saw a real need for an explicit phonological awareness curriculum in reading intervention as well as the Kindergarten general education classroom, so I wrote one! My curriculum is now in two full districts, and being piloted in another six. It has been fabulously received and I am excited to be making an impact in the instruction of early readers."

Ollie White, Ed.S., alumni of Gordon College Graduate Education in Education Leadership

Due to civil unrest in Liberia, Ollie White came to America with her 3-year-old daughter. Ollie immediately began looking for opportunities to learn, attending Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, earning a master's degree. She also began taking Reading Specialist courses at Gordon College, eventually earning an Educational Specialist degree in Education Leadership from Gordon College while in Liberia. Ollie returned to Liberia, a country with poor literacy rates, and started a Christian school called Beautiful Beginnings. The first year she taught 31 kindergarteners and first graders how to read. Her instruction at Gordon instilled in her the confidence to promote effective reading instruction. Beautiful beginnings was later a part of a US study on intervention using the Early Grade Reading Assessment. Following this, in 2015 the German Embassy funded an activity center for the school. Ollie has been recognized by the Minister of Education and the President of Liberia. Beautiful Beginning School now serves 400 students kindergarten through grade 12.

Christen Nine, Author of A Parent’s Survival Guide to Common Core Math: Grades K-5, Alumni of the Master of Education program at Gordon College

Christen Nine earned a Bachelors of Science in Mathematics and a Masters of Education in Moderate Disabilities from Gordon College in Wenham, MA. Christen is a certified Secondary Mathematics Teacher through the state of Massachusetts, and she currently serves as an adjunct faculty member of Gordon College’s Graduate Education Department while also teaching high school mathematics at Mount Zion Christian Schools in Manchester, NH. The key motivators behind Christen’s teaching and writing have been her combined passions for meaningful continuity in mathematics education, for making math accessible and understandable to all students, and for seeing the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics implemented in a valuable and worthy manner.