Introducing Sunday Literacy: A Consultant Service designed to Elevate Literacy, Transform Schools, and Change Lives

 Introducing Sunday Literacy. This work began with one student I did not know how to teach to read and a promise I made to never let that happen again. It is about prevention, not reaction, and building capacity that lasts.

As a new year begins, I find myself doing what I have done for years on Sundays: slowing down long enough to reflect. Reflection is how I make sense of this work. It is where hard truths surface. It is where clarity lives. One truth has become impossible for me to ignore. We are not failing students because we lack intervention programs. We are failing students because we are approaching the reading crisis backwards. That realization is what led me to launch Sunday Literacy, my literacy consulting practice.

The Student Who Changed Everything

Early in my teaching career, I had a student I did not know how to teach to read.

She was bright, thoughtful, and eager to do well. She worked hard. She trusted the adults in the room. I did everything I had been trained to do and believed that effort would be enough. It was not.

She graduated from high school and entered adulthood still identifying herself as a nonreader.

I consider her my greatest professional failure because the system I worked within did not give me the knowledge I needed to help her. She lost years of instructional time that she could never get back. And no amount of later intervention could fully undo that loss. That experience changed how I see reading instruction forever.

From Classrooms to Systems

Over time, I came to understand that reading failure is rarely about individual children and almost always about systems. Across schools and districts, I see the same reactive pattern repeated. Evidence-based supports are often withheld until students qualify for Tier 2 or Tier 3. Districts invest heavily in training interventionists and specialists while Tier 1 classroom teachers receive very little specialized training in how reading actually develops. This is a backwards way of approaching the problem.

Many of these interventions are not born out of proactive instructional planning. They are brought about through parent complaints, due process filings, and lawsuits. This is another costly and time-consuming reality of public education. When we fail to get Tier 1 right, systems are forced to respond later in ways that are far more expensive and far less effective.

Tier 1 teachers are the frontline of defense.

They decide what to teach, to whom, when, and for how long. They are the first to notice who is struggling and determine why. They determine what instruction every student receives long before a referral is ever written. When Tier 1 instruction is misaligned, students lose something far more valuable than test scores. They lose time. And time is the one thing struggling readers cannot afford to lose.

My career shifted when I understood that individual classrooms cannot fix systemic problems alone. I stepped out of the classroom not because I wanted to leave students, but because I wanted to reach more of them. I pursued leadership roles because instructional decisions matter, and those decisions must be grounded in evidence, not tradition. That journey eventually brought me to Kingston City School District and led me to earn my doctorate from the University of Florida, where my work focused on dyslexia and on bridging the gap between scientific research and Tier 1 reading instruction.

What the Research Has Told Us for Decades

The data has been telling us this story for a long time. We just have not wanted to listen. Recent NAEP reading scores confirm what educators see every day. Fourth- and eighth-grade reading scores continue to decline, and a growing percentage of students are performing below the Basic level.

But NAEP is not the warning. It is the confirmation.

Reading research has consistently shown that when students struggle and receive effective, evidence-based instruction in the early grades, particularly in first grade, many can catch up to their peers. When that same instruction is delayed until fourth grade, the likelihood of closing the gap drops dramatically. This is not because students lose intelligence or motivation. It is because they lose time.

Early reading success compounds. Early reading failure compounds too.

This is why I say, without hesitation, that you cannot Tier 2 and Tier 3 your way out of a Tier 1 problem. Intervention can help, but it cannot replace years of misaligned core instruction.

Tier 1 instruction is where prevention lives. When Tier 1 is aligned to the science of reading, far fewer students ever need intervention. When it is not, schools spend years chasing gaps that never should have opened in the first place.

We must teach to prevent, not remediate.

What Is Sunday Literacy?

Sunday Literacy exists to help school systems grow their own.

The work is grounded in a simple question I ask myself constantly: If I walk away, will this fall apart? If the answer is yes, then I have not done my job.

Sunday Literacy is about building capacity within districts, so the work does not depend on a single person, program, or consultant. It is about strengthening the people and systems that are already there, aligning instruction to evidence, and creating structures that last.

This work prioritizes prevention over remediation. It focuses on Tier 1 because that is where the greatest leverage lives. It treats teacher knowledge as the most powerful investment a system can make.

The goal is not dependence. The goal is sustainability.

Because real change has to last. And lasting change only happens when districts invest in their own people.

A Way Forward

Illiteracy costs far more than test scores.

It limits access to content, careers, and civic participation. It drains district resources. It fuels inequity and forces schools into reactive, compliance-driven decisions that are expensive, time-consuming, and often ineffective. Most damaging of all, it shapes how students see themselves as learners.

And the hardest truth is this: we have more agency here than we sometimes want to admit.

We already know how to prevent much of the reading failure we see today. What we have lacked is the willingness to invest early, invest wisely, and trust educators with the knowledge they need to do this work well.

Sunday Literacy exists to help districts shift from reaction to prevention. To move away from systems built on remediation and toward systems built on strong, evidence-aligned Tier 1 instruction. To build internal capacity so the work does not depend on a single program, person, or consultant.

Because if a system falls apart when one person leaves, then it was never truly a system at all.

That student from my early career still walks with me in every decision I make.

This work is for her. And for every child who deserves better.

If you are ready to fix Tier 1, invest in your people, and build systems that endure, I would be honored to walk alongside you.

For districts wondering where to begin, I offer an initial, no-cost conversation to help clarify needs, identify leverage points, and determine whether this work is the right fit. This is not a pitch. It is a chance to think clearly about what sustainable change could look like in your system.

You can learn more about Sunday Literacy at Sunday Literacy Consultant Services

I can be reached directly at Contact or 845-417-3490.

Because real change is not about quick fixes. It is about building the kind of capacity that lasts.

—Sarah Holbrook, Ed. D

Founder, Sunday Literacy

When we know better, we teach better.

See you next Sunday!

References

Juel, C. (1988). Learning to read and write: A longitudinal study of 54 children from first through fourth grades. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80(4), 437–447. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.80.4.437

National Center for Education Statistics. (2022). National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP): Reading results. https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading/

Scarborough, H. S. (2001). Connecting early language and literacy to later reading disabilities. In S. B. Neuman & D. K. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook of early literacy research (pp. 97–110). Guilford Press.

Snow, C. E., Burns, M. S., & Griffin, P. (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. National Academy Press.

Torgesen, J. K. (2004). Preventing early reading failure. American Educator, 28(3), 6–19.