Suzette Williams

Hi, I am Suzette Williams, author and inventor of “The Reading Rules.” I was born, raised, and currently reside in San Pedro California. I attended San Pedro High School and then went on to Cal State University Northridge on a softball scholarship. At age 19 I married, and at 20 gave birth to my daughter Johanna.

I became a single parent at age 21 and subsequently left school for a year to take care of my daughter. In 1990, I returned to school and got my associates degree at Los Angeles Harbor College, and then transferred to Cal State Dominguez Hills where I received my bachelors degree in Africana Studies.

In 1993, I was working as a grocery store checker and was a single parent to my, at the time, 3 year-old daughter Johanna. I began using a very well known system to teach her to read and by age 7 she was assessed and estimated to be at middle-to-late fifth grade reading and comprehension level as a first grader. This success lead me to pursue teaching as a career.

In 1996, I entered The Los Angeles Unified School District’s Intern Program and received my teaching credential in 1998. It was then I began teaching and was assigned to a Kindergarten class. I was not given a reading program to use. At that time, the goal was only to teach the basic letters and sounds. Because of my experience with my daughter my goals were much higher, so I began using the reading program I used with my daughter, only to find out it had many “holes” which didn’t address the various complexities of learning to read English words beyond the 26 letter sounds. From this, came the birth of The Reading Rules – a systematic method of teaching reading which goes beyond the 26 letter sounds and basic digraphs, and is the key to unlocking mastery of reading in English.

In 2012, I graduated from the University of Santa Monica with a master’s degree in Spiritual Psychology. It was in this program, that I was encouraged to pursue my dreams of seeing The Reading Rules to fruition. In my 2 years at USM I worked diligently to develop The Reading Rules with the intention of one day sharing it with the world.

It is my heart-felt intention to be instrumental in helping to erase illiteracy, by sharing The Reading Rules with the world.