Stronger Together: Collaboration in the North Country

In the news: SUNY Potsdam spotlights our work on dyslexia

We're proud to share a new feature from SUNY Potsdam, Reversing the Burden of Dyslexia, which profiles our director, Kelly Smith '20.

Kelly is an AIS teacher at F.S. Banford Elementary in Canton and a graduate of SUNY Potsdam's literacy master's program. The article tells her story as a student with dyslexia, and how that experience now drives her work helping North Country teachers reach every reader. It also highlights something we care deeply about here at SLVTLC: what becomes possible when educators, schools, and colleges work together.

Collaboration is how good ideas reach classrooms

The Literacy Learning in Action workshop series started with a conversation. During the 2024-25 school year, Kelly sat down with educators and administrators at SUNY Potsdam and asked them to look at dyslexia together through the lens of the Science of Reading.

That conversation, built on SLVTLC's longstanding partnership with SUNY Potsdam's Sheard Literacy Center, grew into two things:

• A model classroom in Satterlee Hall.

• A 14-session workshop series in 2025-26, covering practical topics like systematic phonics, encoding skills, and strategies that support student thinking.

Each session pairs one manageable idea with activities teachers can bring straight back to their rooms. Every single participant surveyed said they found real value in the series and would recommend it to a colleague.

None of that happens in isolation. In a region as spread out as ours, teachers can easily end up working alone. Collaboration closes that distance. It lets a classroom teacher in one district learn alongside a professor, an administrator, and a college student, and everyone leaves with something new.

What SLVTLC means for current and future educators

Our motto is "A source for teachers, a promise for students." When teachers get the knowledge and tools they need, students are the ones who benefit.

For today's teachers, SLVTLC offers professional learning that is practical, local, and shaped by what teachers say they need. The workshops are built around the realities of North Country classrooms, and the series is adding virtual options and online resources so distance is less of a barrier.

For tomorrow's teachers, the impact may be even bigger. SUNY Potsdam undergraduate and graduate students have learned side by side with working teachers in these workshops. They head into their first classrooms already connected to a network of colleagues and already practicing research-based literacy instruction.

For the region, the work is just getting started. With 16 public schools, four universities, and St. Lawrence-Lewis BOCES nearby, SUNY Potsdam is a natural hub for this work. The college's literacy center is now working with local educators, including Kelly, to design a microcredential in dyslexia studies, with a longer-term goal of a graduate certificate that prepares nationally certifiable dyslexia interventionists.

Join us

The North Country is full of people who care about kids. When we bring those people together, the results reach far beyond any one classroom.

We encourage you to read the full article and see what this partnership is building. Then come be part of it: check out our upcoming workshops, connect with your school's SLVTLC representative, and bring a colleague along. Whether you've been teaching for 20 years or are just starting your program, there's a place for you here.