READ Learners’ Stories

Struggling reader grows up to be a writer

Jordan Harbour attended the READ Society when he was in Grade 3, and he didn’t like it very much. Today, though the Victoria resident says learning to read was the key to the life he has today.

“I remember that I didn’t really want to come, because reading was painful and I was really struggling but I appreciated it later.”

Harbour now makes his living through his mastery of literacy skills: he is a copywriter, editor and project manager for a local internet solutions company.

He says an experimental phonetics-based reading program through his elementary school obstructed his ability to read. “Reading didn’t make sense and I saw school as difficult and myself as a failure.”

His memories of being a learner at READ are tactile: playing games, pulling the perforated strips off printer paper and cutting out shapes. But somewhere along the way, the mystery of letters forming sounds began to make sense, and by Grade 5 he was an avid reader of fantasy novels.

“It’s difficult to project where I would be today if I hadn’t learned to read, but I imagine it could have been a downward spiral. Learning to read was the key, and literacy was the key.”

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