To celebrate IMSE’s 30th anniversary, we sat down with CEO and Co-Founder Jeanne Jeup to reflect on the company’s evolution, its extraordinary human impact, and its role in changing the story of literacy over the past three decades.


IMSE turns 30 this year. When you think back to those early days, what did you believe then that you still believe today?

 

I believed then, and I believe now, that every child can learn to read when they are taught the right way. That conviction has never wavered. What I saw as a first-grade teacher shook me to my core: I had children in my classroom who were struggling, and I didn’t know how to help them. I know now that wasn’t a failure of effort or love, but rather a failure of the curriculum I was told to teach. I simply hadn’t been taught how to teach reading in a way that actually works for all learners.

When my co-founders, Dr. David Bloom and Bronwyn Hain, and I started IMSE in 1996, we built it on the belief that teachers deserve better, and so do children. If we could equip teachers with structured, explicit, sequential literacy instruction grounded in how the brain actually learns to read, we could offer results that change the story for children everywhere. Thirty years later, that belief is exactly the same.

 

You weren’t taught how to teach children to read in your university training. That gap was your catalyst for starting IMSE. While the latest National Council on Teacher Quality report shows encouraging progress, it also found that 47% of teacher preparation programs still fail to adequately prepare future teachers to teach reading, and one in five continue teaching debunked reading methods. More than three decades after you founded IMSE, why does this preparation gap persist, and what still needs to change?

 

Unfortunately, the gap is still very real. Over the past 30 years, I’ve worked with thousands of educators, including many who hold master’s degrees and even doctorates in reading, who were never taught how to teach children to read in a structured, cumulative, and sequential way. I still regularly hear the same thing I experienced myself: “I graduated and had no idea how to teach a child to decode.” The good news is that this is a solvable problem. When teachers are equipped with evidence-based instruction grounded in a structured, cumulative, and sequential approach, they have the knowledge and confidence to help every child become a successful reader.

What has changed is awareness. The science of reading movement has brought mainstream attention to the fact that reading instruction matters enormously, and that not all approaches are equally effective. I hear families asking more informed questions now, while legislators pass new laws and administrators rethink curricula. That tells me we are making progress.

The challenge of the day is acting on what we know. Too many teacher preparation programs still don’t offer rigorous coursework in fundamental skills like phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, and language comprehension. Teachers are still graduating without the foundational mastery they need. That’s why what IMSE offers — deep, sustained curricula, professional learning, and partnership to help districts translate research findings into action — remains as crucial today as it was in 1996.

 

The field of literacy instruction has shifted enormously over 30 years. How has IMSE stayed true to its mission while also evolving with the research?

 

Our mission has always been rooted in science, and the science has not shifted in the way that instructional fads tend to do. Over thirty years, the research has become deeper, broader, and more conclusive, but it points to the same conclusions. We’ve always known that Structured Literacy, and specifically Orton-Gillingham-based approaches, work. Now we have decades of brain imaging research, longitudinal studies, and meta-analyses confirming what Structured Literacy practitioners have long observed in classrooms. 

Orton-Gillingham provided the structure, but we’ve built on that framework by developing the scaffolds, instructional models, and practical tools that help teachers differentiate instruction to meet the needs of every learner. That combination of a proven methodology and classroom-ready implementation is what enables educators to deliver instruction at the highest level and helps all readers succeed.

And yet, IMSE has not stood still. One of the most significant steps in our evolution has been the development of OG+, our Structured Literacy foundations curriculum. It’s a complete resource that gives K–2 teachers what to teach, how to teach it, and the materials to do it. For the first time, a district can come to IMSE not just to train their teachers, but to build their entire early literacy infrastructure. We recognized that training alone wasn’t enough. Teachers also needed high-quality, evidence-based materials that supported consistent instruction every day, across Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3.

From there, we’ve extended our professional learning continuum in both directions. We developed an early literacy course for Pre-K because the earlier we build oral language, phonological awareness, and foundational skills, the stronger every child’s reading trajectory becomes. And as students move into grades 3–5, instruction naturally shifts from learning to read to reading to understand, which is why we developed Morphology Plus to help teachers build vocabulary, comprehension, and morphological knowledge at that stage. Importantly, this continuum is for all students — including those in intervention and special education settings. Our resources and training are designed to support educators across all three tiers, wherever a student is in their learning journey.

That commitment from Pre-K through grade 5, across general education, intervention, and special education reflects how seriously we take sustainable implementation. We don’t want districts to train once and figure it out alone. Our consulting, coaching, and Master Instructor network exist to make sure the research actually reaches students, every day, in every classroom.

We’ve stayed true to IMSE’s original mission by anchoring to what we know. When balanced literacy was dominant, and we were seen as the outliers, we trusted our mission. Our fidelity to the research is what our teachers and school partners trust us for.

 

Thirty years in, what do you wish more people understood about what it actually takes to teach a child to read?

 

Reading is not natural. Speaking is natural; humans are wired for oral language. But reading is a skill that must be explicitly taught, and taught systematically. The brain has to be trained to connect sounds to letters to meaning. That process requires a teacher who understands oral language, phonological awareness, phonics, morphology, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension and knows how to sequence instruction.

Also, people should understand the emotional weight of reading failure. When a child can’t read, it affects everything. Their confidence, their identity, their relationship with school. Reading failure is one of the most preventable forms of educational harm, and yet we still allow it to happen at scale because we haven’t invested adequately in teacher preparation.

I wish people understood what it means for a teacher to feel unprepared. I lived that. The stress, the self-doubt, the heartbreak of watching a child struggle and not knowing what to do. When we prepare teachers well, we change their lives too, not just the lives of their students.

 

You’ve said the next big opportunity is helping schools move from awareness of the science of reading to consistent, high-quality implementation. What’s standing in the way?

 

Several things, and they’re all interconnected.

First, as I mentioned before, professional learning is often too shallow. Sustainable change requires deep initial training, coaching support, and time to try out new tactics and approaches. Districts need to invest in professional learning that goes beyond a single event.

Second, implementation without fidelity breaks down quickly. Schools adopt new curricula or new programs, but if teachers don’t have the foundational knowledge to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing, they can’t adapt when something isn’t working. The “what” without the “why” leads to inconsistency.

Third, leadership alignment is critical. Lasting change happens when district and school leaders share a common understanding of the science of reading and establish a clear, consistent vision for literacy instruction. When principals, curriculum leaders, and teachers are working from the same evidence-based foundation, professional learning is reinforced through everyday decisions about curriculum, coaching, and classroom practice. That kind of alignment creates the conditions for Structured Literacy to take root and deliver lasting results for students.

And finally, time. Teachers are already stretched thin. Asking them to transform their practice, often by unlearning approaches they were taught, takes time and support. That is a reason to invest more carefully in the literacy solutions that really work.

 

If you could give district leaders one piece of advice to get literacy implementation right over the next 3–5 years, what would it be?

 

Don’t skip the foundation. It is everything. It’s tempting to adopt a new core curriculum, announce a new literacy initiative, and call it done. But a curriculum without teacher knowledge doesn’t work. Teachers need to understand the science deeply enough to teach it flexibly, to respond to individual students, and to troubleshoot when a child isn’t progressing. We have to build teacher capacity to change the story at scale.

Invest in your teachers first, not just once, but over time. Build in coaching. Create structures for professional learning communities where teachers can discuss what they’re seeing and problem-solve together. And then hold the line. Changing the story of literacy is not a one-year project. Districts that see real, sustained gains are the ones that stay the course for three to five years with consistency, accountability, and coaching.

The schools and districts that have partnered with us over the long term, not just for a single training, are the ones where we see reading scores move, where we see teachers transform, and where we see children who once couldn’t read become readers. That doesn’t happen overnight.

 

If you could speak directly to teachers across the country, what would you encourage them to do around literacy?

 

I would say: you are not alone, and it is not your fault that you weren’t prepared.

So many teachers feel quietly ashamed that they don’t know how to teach reading the way their students need. I felt that shame as a first-grade teacher. But an antidote is available — it’s knowledge.

Encourage leaders to invest in proven curriculum and professional learning in Structured Literacy. Learn about the science of reading, not just the headlines, but the actual research and what it means for your classroom. Find a community of teachers who are on this journey with you. IMSE has impacted over 450,000 teachers, and they say the same things to us again and again: “I wish I had known this sooner. It changed everything.”

You went into teaching because you believe in children. The greatest thing you can do for the children in your classroom is to become the most knowledgeable teacher of reading you can be. That knowledge is available, and we are here to support you.

 

Looking ahead, what gives you the most optimism and what concerns you most about the future of literacy in America?

 

What gives me the most optimism is the energy of this moment. Parents, researchers, educators, policymakers — more people are now aligned around evidence-based literacy instruction than at any point in the last thirty years. The conversation has shifted. The stigma around Structured Literacy and explicit phonics instruction is largely gone. That is remarkable progress, and I don’t take it for granted.

What concerns me is that we treat this as a destination rather than a journey. Policy mandates alone don’t teach children to read, teachers do. If we don’t invest deeply and persistently in teacher preparation and ongoing professional learning, the wave of enthusiasm around the science of reading will break without changing the landscape. 

I’m also watching carefully as attention shifts. Reform movements have a way of peaking and receding. The work isn’t done just because there’s momentum. We need sustained investment, long-term accountability, and honest reckoning with the fact that millions of children are still not reading proficiently.

But after thirty years, I have seen what’s possible. I have seen teachers transform their practice. I have seen children who were struggling readers become readers. I have seen whole classrooms moving ahead together. Those are not small things. They represent human lives, human stories, changed forever. That sense of possibility is what has kept me at this work for thirty years, and what will keep me here for whatever comes next.

 

Jeanne Jeup is the CEO and Co-Founder of the Institute for Multi-Sensory Education (IMSE), which she founded in 1996 alongside Dr. David Bloom and Bronwyn Hain. IMSE has impacted more than 450,000 educators in Structured Literacy and Orton-Gillingham-based instruction. Its programs include Orton-Gillingham Plus (K–2), Morphology Plus (grades 3–5), an early literacy program for Pre-K and Kindergarten, and consulting and coaching services for schools and districts. A dedicated Academic team develops all program materials, and over 100 Master Instructors deliver training across the United States.

 


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