The Legacy of Sheryl Chard
Who is Sheryl Chard?
Sheryl Chard is a retired principal of Brandon Park Primary School. Sheryl dedicated around 50 years of her life to education as a teacher and educational leader which included a 20-year stint as a principal.
The conception of PhOrMeS is, in many ways, to be credited to her after a courageous decision in 2018 to begin a late-career deep-dive into the Science of Reading.
Term 4 2018
In late 2018, after dissatisfaction around her school’s spelling program and results, Sheryl was ready to make a change. After 45 years of educational experience and in the twilight of her career, Sheryl took a risk and begin a learning journey about the Science of Reading and Learning.
Part of this journey involved employing a speech pathologist to help oversee the school’s new evidence-informed spelling curriculum. The plan was initially to get the new spelling curriculum implemented in 18 months to two years. However, once Sheryl found the wonderful world of literacy and learning research, a full school revolution was born.
Sheryl’s Brandon Park Journey
Sheryl came to Brandon Park in 2003. It was a small school which was achieving middling results and boasted a culture that was a little resistant to change. Sheryl started a transformative process whereby the school went from having small numbers of students and a less than desirable public perception to a routinely academically strong school with high levels of staff and parent satisfaction. And this was before she was introduced to the world of SoR and SoL!
2019
In early 2019, Sheryl, after seeing the new teaching that was occurring in spelling, wanted to know more about all aspects of literacy teaching and what evidence there was for different methods and the type of content that should be covered. She committed to professional development after professional development, reading research articles and watching videos from world-renowned experts, all while running a 600+ student primary school (largely through a pandemic!!). In the last four years of her career, Sheryl managed to learn an incredible amount about the SoR and SoL and became a leader in this space. Her qualities of excellence and humility were on show for this entire period. Upon retirement, Sheryl set her school up with the following initiatives in literacy instruction:
PhOrMeS: an evidence-informed core literacy skills block
read2Learn: using a knowledge-rich curriculum as a backbone for teaching reading comprehension
write2Learn: using The Writing Revolution and other high quality resources to structure writing instruction
All of these areas will be shared publicly for free with schools upon/during completion.
Sheryl also set up the school to move to Explicit, Direct Instruction as the school’s instructional model and promoted the structure of a literacy intervention team of 4 full-time staff to ensure all children would succeed in their literacy learning.
Sheryl’s SoR Legacy
Sheryl was on record many, many times as saying that she wished she knew about the SoR and SoL so many years ago. By the end of her career she was extremely passionate about spreading the word and sharing resources and providing assistance to other schools wishing to embark on a similar path. And with PhOrMeS being made open and freely available to the public, this wish will be fulfilled for a new generation of educators.
Sheryl’s professional legacy will permeate so many people and in so many different areas and dimensions. Among many achievements in education, one of her last will help many teachers and students who may never know her. Sheryl allowed PhOrMeS to happen. Let’s never forget it.