About Us.

We’re a team of passionate educators—National Board Certified Teachers, former Teachers of the Year, and proud members of the clinical faculty at William & Mary, where we also earned our Master’s in Education. With over three decades of combined experience, our journey has led us to structured literacy—an approach grounded in the science of reading. We are LETRS certified, trained in UFLI, and committed to evidence-based practices that work. By pairing systematic instruction with rich visuals and robust vocabulary support, we create truly transformative learning experiences for English learners.

After years of searching for high-quality, age-appropriate materials designed specifically for English learners—and aligned with the Science of Reading—we realized a gap existed. So we created our own. Through trial, testing, and refinement, ESL Word Nerds was born. When we implemented it with our 100+ ESL students, the results were undeniable: the number of students meeting their WIDA growth bands tripled, and our ESL exit rate doubled. We couldn’t believe the impact—and knew we had to share it. This is the niche the ESL world has been waiting for: structured literacy designed for multilingual learners, by educators FOR educators.