While many aspire to turn their passions into a reality, every individual may not find himself or herself able to do so. However, Allison Greenland is a woman who made her dreams come true, who transformed her passions into reality and is the epitome of success.
She started her career with a Bachelor’s in Business in Marketing. She worked in marketing and sales for several years, only to conclude that she was not meant for this job. She always had a bias towards teaching. She was working with a university and she was in contact with teachers in the university. Stories of these teachers inspired her to go back and pursue her Master’s in Education. Allison Greenland was working at a university in Arizona and her key role was to help teachers through their certification process. The passion she heard of these teachers over the phone, made her pursue her passion for teaching. She loved teaching and had quite a good experience in this field. Eventually, she decided that she would like to focus more on curriculum and so she went ahead to do her Ph.D. in the curriculum in teaching. Being a mother to two young children, she realized that she could not opt for full-time teaching. She always wanted to share the passion of her dissertation research on reading comprehension in children. She also wanted to share her experience of what she had learned while teaching creative writing to adults. From here began her journey of Leap into Literacy, her writing and reading classes.
After being in this business for three years, she concluded that all her different qualifications had finally paid off. She is bonhomie about her passion that is, designing the curriculum and she also loves the fact that kids also get to enjoy their ways and she also gets overwhelmed by the feedback that she receives from the parents.
She believes that even if her path to success has been a circular one with the various alternating route, unlike other people who know exactly what they have to do in their lives but despite the path that she chose to take she is finally happy that at last, she landed at where she was meant to be.
Leap into Literacy is creative reading and writing class for students, in addition to what they learn in schools. Allison Greenland helps students subtly link what is happening in the book while they are reading the first chapter of the book together. If students find that book interesting, they go ahead with that book. Students focus on reading comprehension skills related to that topic for the entire week. It is a good exercise for students who have a flair for literacy. Allison Greenland is of the view that reading comprehension is declining with each passing year.
Leap into Literacy will help students in the way average tutoring will not be able to help students. Leap into Literacy will help students develop other aspects of reading comprehension skills like prediction, asking questions, and how to use their prior knowledge to make connections to what they are reading. This has helped students go for a more creative approach. They explore different genres of books and develop their creative writing skills. Leap into Literacy helps students to extend their sentences with structure and flow.
Allison Greenland through Leap into Literacy aims to help students to develop a life-long love for reading and writing. While some might already have flair for literacy, others might be weak in this aspect but Leap into Literacy aims to enable students to reach their best potential. This is an amazing initiative overall.
Her story is inspiring. The fact that she was doing well in her career in sales and marketing and still chose to quit it to follow her passions is appreciable. While many dream to do this thing, they might not have the required mindset and guts to go for it. Doing something at such a large scale requires efforts, perseverance, dedication, hard work, and a ‘never give up’ attitude. Allison Greenland had all of these qualities and it is the result of these qualities that she could finally figure out her way in life. She landed up in a career where she was destined to. Making changes in the lives of those children makes her happy and that is what matters to her the most. Through her research and her experience as a teacher, she understood the need of the hour and rightly seized the opportunity and opened one of a kind- Leap into Literacy.
To conclude, we can say that it is okay to not have everything figured out at the beginning itself. It is fine if someone takes his or her chances and explores various options to come to the best option suited for him or her in the end.
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