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From Hating to Read to Teaching Literacy

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Brought to the United States from Mexico by her mom when she was 2 years old, CSUF alum Zoila Gallegos grew up learning Spanish from audio tapes and English by watching TV, she said. Placed in a mainstream kindergarten class — bilingual education wasn’t in fashion in the 1970s — she was taught reading using the whole language approach, in which structured phonics lessons are given less attention.

Today, Gallegos, 49, is an assistant principal at Brookhurst Middle School and lives in La Palma, after spending more than two decades working in Los Angeles County. The teacher-turned-administrator who used to hate reading has made a specialty of teaching literacy to at-risk youth.

Continue reading in the Orange County Register.