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Jami Hunt-Williams has been a high school English teacher for nearly 20 years and holds an MFA in Writing and an Ed.S. in K-12 Leadership. Her writing has been published in literary journals and she has published numerous books. She is the founder and owner of YRTW.
Jami Hunt-Williams - founder
Jami Hunt-Williams - founder
After 20 years on the front lines watching secondary readers fall through the cracks, I built Read Herring and jAImi—not to add more academic bloat, but to give teachers the zero-prep, high-dignity leverage they actually need to fix reading in secondary schools."
After 20 years on the front lines watching secondary readers fall through the cracks, I built Read Herring and jAImi—not to add more academic bloat, but to give teachers the zero-prep, high-dignity leverage they actually need to fix reading in secondary schools."
You don't have a literacy coach credential or a Title I endorsement - what particular area of your background do you feel qualifies you to create curriculum for Science of Reading?
"I actually feel fortunate to have been a Gen-X kid and to have been educated in a small rural school. Most of the teachers had been there forever and they knew their stuff - what worked and what didn't. And I was encouraged and I think panic and prodding have replaced encouragement in reading instruction today because it is such a 'high-stakes' area. When hasn't reading been 'high-stakes,' but is that something that we really need to pass on to the learners? I have been in a high school classroom for nearly 20 years watching students become less and less interested and apt at reading. The data I have collected just as a teacher in 20 years could rival that of any formalized study. But I think what qualifies me more than anything is that I care, I care that these students are not getting any recovery, rehabilitation or intervention at the high school level, when it is blatantly obvious through standardized testing, the educational realm's gold standard of success, that our sophomores are not ready for college nor careers.
What makes your approach to Science of Reading instructional design so automatic and effective?
To understand that, you have to look at how I was raised. I was taught to read at four by my grandmother, was reading To Kill a Mockingbird by age six, and had a pastor grandfather who made me learn Latin and Greek roots and report back dictionary definitions whenever I hit an unfamiliar word. By second grade, I was writing long-form stories.
When a brain spends decades actively processing, analyzing, and constructing language, the foundational machinery for decoding, syntax, and pedagogical structure stops requiring deliberate thought—it becomes hardwired.
When I encounter new research from the Science of Reading (SoR)—a field grounded in cognitive psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience—I don't have to translate the concepts from scratch. The framework to digest, synthesize, and operationalize that research into a classroom-ready system is already running in the background.
Now, math, well, math was never my love. I'll leave the spreadsheets to the accountants, but I have had a lifelong love affair with words, so maybe that is why I can see solutions to problems with more ease than others. That lifelong exposure is why I can see architectural solutions to secondary reading problems with an ease that eludes traditional textbook publishers. It started in my childhood, the exposure to words and their importance. I was bred to be a reader and a writer.
What do you feel is the most important aspect of Science of Reading at the lower levels?
At any grade level—and with any linguistic rule—the most important work is building the explicit tie between the rule and the result.
That means teaching students how to separate syllables, why every syllable requires a vowel, how surrounding consonants dictate vowel pronunciation, and how the "r-controlled" rule functions. We have to move students away from guessing and into the intentional internalization of structural relationships and orthographic rules.
As unglamorous as that work might sound, we have to teach readers of all ages how to master those mechanics. It takes focus, practice, and productive struggle—but as educators, giving students those permanent structural keys is the most vital work we can do.
What do you feel is the most important aspect of Science of Reading at the upper levels, secondary?
Working within the real constraints of time, finding what gives teachers the absolute most bang for their buck, and convincing secondary leaders that intervention is worth every minute and dollar. At the high school level, everything is focused on college and career readiness, and teachers are rightfully subject-focused.
That is why our recovery architecture takes just 20 minutes a day and is fully guided in a relatable, non-robotic way. It is truly plug-and-play, making it effortless for any secondary teacher to implement.
The reality is this: in Missouri, we standardized-test sophomores in ELA. The primary reason I have seen in 20 years is so the state can assign a grade to the school. That data is rarely used to drive real, actionable student intervention.
So, are we as educators satisfied with turning 58% of our students out into the world at a below-basic reading level? We shouldn't be. Our educational system needs a radical, urgent awakening: we have cheated generations out of the confidence and skills to read. We owe them their reading dignity back—it is quite literally our duty.
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