Nora Chahbazi, creator and founder of EBLI, Evidence Based Literacy Instruction, and owner/founder of Ounce of Prevention Reading Center, was led to her work as a result of her own child’s struggle with learning to read and spell. In 1998, as a result of her 2nd grade daughter’s reading difficulties, she spent 6 months researching reading. Based on what she learned through this quest, she taught her daughter to read in about 3 hours.
Read Nora’s full story below…
Though Nora’s formal education is in nursing and she spent 12 years specializing in Neonatal Intensive Care, her experience with her daughter resulted in her insatiable passion for educating herself and others about effective, efficient reading instruction. She continues to use what she’s learned to help people of all ages who have suffered and thought they were ‘broken’ as a result of the inability to read to their potential. She is also passionate about helping educators and others who teach reading refine their literacy instruction by teaching reading, spelling, and writing with EBLI in their classrooms.
To further expand the reach of EBLI, Nora created trainings for educators. To date, she has trained thousands of teachers across the country in EBLI and has taught tens of thousands of students at her center as well as in classrooms, consulting to assist EBLI trained educators to refine their practice. She was chosen for the 50 in 52 Journey highlighting ‘Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things’ in 2009 and was also interviewed by Maya Angelou on Oprah Radio that same year. Nora was the keynote speaker for the 2009 MASSP Conference and was a presenter at the 2011 Michigan ACT Conference. In 2011, she founded and hosted the first annual Teach the World to Read summit in Detroit. The title of the summit reflects her life mission of teaching the world to read.
Nora has three daughters whose lives have all been impacted by EBLI. Hannah, her oldest, is a graduate of University of Michigan and now works full time at Ounce of Prevention Reading Center and EBLI, teaching EBLI and overseeing all aspects of operations. Colleen graduated from SUNY Brockport with Honors and currently does marketing for a yacht chartering company in Chicago. Since her 3 hours of reading instruction by her mom in second grade, she has been an exceptional reader and writer. Kelly is a student in the Honors program at Oakland University. Like Colleen, she is a visual-spatial hands-on learner and would likely have struggled with learning to read if she had not been taught systematically. When she was 5, Nora chose to enroll her in Junior Kindergarten where no reading instruction occurred. She taught her to read at home that year and moved her to 1st grade, skipping Kindergarten. Kelly scored at a 7th grade level in basic reading skills in 1st grade! Since then, several of Nora’s family members and friends have been trained in EBLI and are also passionate about EBLI’s mission to teach the world to read.