What I Believe
Every kid can become a reader. Sometimes they just need the right person, the right book, and a little patience.
I believe reading should feel like an adventure, not a chore. I believe in meeting kids where they are and building from there without shame and without pressure, just steady, joyful progress. And I believe that when you combine the science of how reading works with books a child actually cares about, something magical happens.
Current Certifications & Professional Development
I take my own learning as seriously as I take your child’s. Being a great reading teacher means staying current with the research, continuing to sharpen my skills, and always pushing myself to get better at this work.
Here’s where I am right now and where I’m headed:
Current credentials: Reading Specialist certification, degrees in Elementary Education and Secondary English, years of classroom and curriculum design experience.
In progress: IMSE Orton-Gillingham Plus (OG+) training—a comprehensive, asynchronous course in structured literacy and multisensory instruction. I’m also completing IMSE’s Phonological Awareness course, which deepens my ability to assess and build the sound-level skills that are foundational to reading.
Coming next: IMSE Interventionist Practicum—a supervised, hands-on certification that involves working directly with students under the guidance of experienced mentors. This is the capstone of the IMSE certification pathway and represents the highest level of structured literacy training available through the program.
I’m also studying the work of David Kilpatrick (phonological processing and rapid word recognition), Louisa Moats (language structure and teacher knowledge), and Sally Shaywitz (dyslexia research)—three of the most influential voices in reading science today. Their research directly informs how I work with your child.
My goal is simple: to be the most qualified, most prepared, most effective reading teacher I can possibly be. Your child deserves nothing less.
Hi, I’m Candace
I’m a certified reading specialist, a former classroom teacher, a curriculum designer, and a mom of two (Audra, 11, and Wade, 9) who has been obsessed with books and reading for as long as I can remember.
I hold degrees in both Elementary Education and Secondary English, and I earned my Reading Specialist certification because I wanted to understand reading at the deepest level—not just how to teach it, but why some kids struggle and what actually works to help them break through. That training gave me the foundation to look at a child’s reading and know exactly what’s going on beneath the surface: where they’re strong, where they’re stuck, and what they need next.
Here is what I figured out pretty early in my career: my real passion isn’t standing at the front of a classroom. It’s building the curriculum, designing the activities, choosing the perfect book, and figuring out how to make a tricky concept click through play and stories. That’s the part that lights me up.
That passion is what led me to stay leave the traditional corporate workforce. When my own kids were little, I created a full preschool curriculum for them from scratch. It’s hands-on, play-based, and built around books they couldn’t put down. Watching them fall in love with learning that way, I knew I was onto something. So I turned it into Reading to Discover, where I design literacy-rich activity packs now used by parents and educators across the country.
The Discovery Reading Club is where all of that comes together. I’m bringing those same curriculum-building skills with the play-based, book-driven approach to elementary-aged students in Bozeman who need a little extra support. Every session is designed from scratch around real books your child will love, with targeted skill work woven in so naturally they just think they’re having fun.