Severna Park resident Julia Pensyl has spent a lifetime supplying people with the tools to read.
During her 34 years as an educator, Pensyl helped students who had a variety of needs. She taught special education, served as a school-based resource teacher and held other roles, with 31 years of her career coming with Anne Arundel County Public Schools.
“The goal of special education is to level the playing field so students have the chance to feel success in a general education classroom,” Pensyl said. “A lot of times in schools, students were acting out, but when you found out what their deficits were, you had a better understanding of why. So, I worked with school teams to provide support and accommodations to build opportunities for success.”
After retiring from Anne Arundel County Public Schools in 2019, Pensyl missed providing those opportunities for success. Cue the Anne Arundel County Literacy Council (AACLC).
AACLC volunteer tutors teach basic reading, writing and vocabulary skills to adults and out-of-school youth.
Starting in 2020, Pensyl tutored one student with AACLC for two years. After the COVID-19 pandemic, she worked with another student twice a week for a year. Since November 2023, Pensyl has helped a student who has been making steady progress.
Jane Seiss, AACLC’s executive director, said Pensyl is a great tutor because she adapts to each person.
“Julia is very kind and patient,” Seiss said. “She has been an enthusiastic volunteer who personalizes her teaching based on each student's learning style and needs.”
Being in special education, Pensyl had the benefit of training in the Wilson Reading System (third grade to adults) and Wilson Fundations (kindergarten through second grade). She picked up “quite a few” tricks from her years of teaching and interventions. Here are a few examples:
“When you read a passage, you need to make a movie in your mind.”
“I teach students that every syllable has to have at least one vowel sound. Vowels give words voice.”
“I try to show them words are just chunks of sound. And once you break the chunks down, you can sound out any word. I try to take the mystery out of the English language because there are so many rules and variations.”
Wilson encourages learners to work on glued sounds, which Pensyl described as word chunks or sounds that can be difficult to separate.
“I drill them on glued sounds, or welded sounds: ang-fang, ing-ring, ung-lung, ank-bank,” Pensyl said.
“I teach them to flex when reading a word,” Pensyl added. “If it doesn’t make sense with a short vowel sound, try it with a long vowel sound.”
For students who cannot hear vowel sounds, she uses another method: the Lindamood-Bell vowel circle.
“You feel how the lips and jaw and tongue are moving when you sound out the vowel,” she explained.
Those ideas come from three decades of experience in schools, where seven seemed to be her magic number. After teaching for four years in Pennsylvania, one year at Severna Park Elementary and two years at Ferndale Elementary in Glen Burnie, Pensyl spent seven years as a first-grade teacher at Jacobsville Elementary in Pasadena, seven years as a special education teacher and team leader at Four Seasons Elementary in Gambrills, seven years as a school-based resource teacher or leader with the Anne Arundel County Public Schools central offices, and seven years as a team leader and special education teacher at Glen Burnie Park Elementary.
Throughout that time, she never stopped problem-solving. As a first-grade teacher, she had a student with a hearing impairment.
“I wore an FM (frequency modulation) unit so everything we said went into her ears … The kids sat in a circle and each child had a chance to say something to her in a microphone,” Pensyl said. “So that made her feel like part of the class and like she could participate in class.”
Now, she finds the same joy as a tutor with AACLC. She encourages others to apply.
“It is the greatest feeling to see someone make sense of a passage and gain confidence and feel proud of themselves,” Pensyl said. “I feel like everyone deserves to feel that joy, and I give them credit for being brave enough to reach out and ask for help.”
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