Starting in 1992 Lorraine Powell-Cadette worked as a Primary School teacher in Trinidad and Tobago. It was while teaching that she recognised that reading problems were being experienced by many students. Not just the ones she came into contact with but throughout the country.
Out of a keen desire to help children and recognising the teaching strategies that were perpetuating the problem, in 2007 she developed the Hopalong Reading Programme which employed a simple yet effective method that she created called the 3-Step Reading Approach.
In more recent years she employed the 3-Step Reading Approach in a reading programme for older individuals who were either non-readers or needed to refine their reading and comprehension skills to a high school graduate level. The programme became known as Growing Minds.
Both online reading platforms currently have approximately four thousand users.
In continuing to share her experience with her fellow educators Lorraine
later refined the dynamic teaching strategy she had employed in her own classrooms and subsequently called it FlexiLearn.
All the teaching/learning approaches employed are based on the unique needs of the community and the philosophy is that learning should be taken from the child’s perspective. It is this perspective that makes teaching and learning meaningful, engaging and fun!
Lorraine charted the course for numerous education projects with the support of her team. Over the years Hopalong has grown and became even more refined, based on the many years of experience in the field. Consequently, the needs of students, teachers, principals and parents are fulfilled through Lorraine’s homegrown approaches to teaching and learning.
