Author's Bio

Erin Scott retired from education in 2015 after 27 years of service. During her career, she taught first through fifth grades, served as a Reading Recovery Instructor, and Intervention teacher and Instructional Coach for Ozark City School District. She was an adjunct instructor at Troy University and worked as a professional development provider for the Troy Regional Inservice Center. Erin’s last ten years were with the Alabama Reading Initiative (ARI) as an Educational Specialist at the Alabama Department of Education. While working for ARI at the state level her assignments consisted of designing and facilitating state-wide professional learning sessions, serving as ARI technology coordinator and leading regional staff in southeast Alabama. As regional staff leader for southeast Alabama, Erin worked with 21 school districts providing support to superintendents and their staff as they developed and implemented district academic plans based on increasing student achievement. For the past eleven years, she co-authored and instructed online educational courses through eLearning. Some courses she was instrumental in co-writing were “Writing in the Middle School Classroom,”  “Kids, Content and Comprehension” and “Literacy in the Content Areas Grades K12.”

She graduated from Troy State University with an Educational Specialist Degree in Early Childhood Education and also completed master certifications in Elementary Education and Educational Leadership. Her Reading Specialist Degree was obtained from Georgia State University. Over the years, Erin personally learned from several well-known researchers and theorists. Some of these include Roland Goode, Jim Knight, Stephanie Harvey, and Louisa Motes. She was one of three teachers selected to study abroad in 1991 in Melbourne, Australia under Marie Clay. Dr. Clay is highly recognized world-wide for her research in the developmental stages of literacy. Erin served on a research team under Constance Kami at the University of Alabama Birmingham. During this time, she worked on research correlating Piaget’s Cognitive Stages of Development with a child intellectual development of mathematical knowledge.

In San Diego, Denver, St. Louis, Atlanta, New Orleans, Washington D. C., Toronto, Canada, and throughout Alabama, Erin has shared her expertise on literacy development, the constructionist theory of building knowledge, and effective leadership within the school setting. In 2007, she was highlighted for her work as a building level coach in the National Staff Development Center professional journal. The article title was “Adding Layers of Support-Alabama’s Program Helps Site Based Coaching Succeed”. In a Reading First national convention pamphlet that described Alabama’s achieving the greatest reading gains in the nation she was recognized as a leading reading specialist. In 1991 after teaching three years, Erin was selected as Alabama’s Reading Teacher of the Year. 

Since her retirement, she has been working as an educational consultant supporting districts in analyzing achievement data, evaluating and enhancing curriculum and instructional designs, and implementing collaborative practices to support teacher effectiveness and student learning. She is certified by AdvancED to serve on external review teams throughout the United States and abroad and has served on school visitation teams since 2004. Never wanting to get to far away from students, Erin enjoys tutoring students in literacy and math, along with providing academic counseling to students in planning and preparing for the ACT.

Erin lives in Dothan, AL with her husband. They have one son who is an undergraduate student at Auburn University.  They are active members of Ridgecrest Baptist Church. Erin cherishes her relationship with her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He has been with her through many difficult times-two successful kidney transplants, multiple health issues due to over 30 years of anti-rejection medications, plus the death of her father who gave her the first kidney. Erin states she tries to live by what her daddy always told her and modeled for her “ Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” James 4:17. The right thing and the easy thing are seldom the same thing.