Cathy Angel has been teaching children to read for over 40 years. Her greatest passion lies with teaching beginning and struggling readers. Her varied professional background includes running a preschool, tutoring, teaching kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th grades, serving as an acting elementary school principal and working as a Literacy Consultant for an Iowa AEA. Currently she is the owner and the Literacy Consultant for Making Reading Heavenly!
Cathy's graduate training at the Reading Institute of Rochester, Minnesota has impacted her teaching more than anything else. During the two summers she studied how to better help dyslexic readers at the Institute, she learned much about teaching struggling students using the Orton-Gillingham approach. Following that coursework she felt impelled to teach other teachers how to be more effective reading instructors. Since then she has taught innumerable graduate courses to hundreds of teachers at many of the Area Education Agencies across Iowa.
Cathy has a BA in elementary education from the University of Northern Iowa, a MA in elementary administration from Drake University and a reading endorsement from Winona State University. She is a wife, mother of three daughters and grandmother of twelve grandchildren. Her faith and her family are both very important to her.
One of the reasons Cathy is so passionate about helping children become experts at reading is her strong belief in the connections between a child's success/ lack of success in reading and that child's self image later in life. Her sincere desire is to share her expertise in reading instruction and to positively impact as many young and struggling readers as possible.