Dr. Margaret Phinney is a Professor Emerita at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. She has been involved in education all of her adult life. While in the Peace Corps, she helped build a community-based kindergarten in a Venezuelan barrio. Later, she taught elementary school as a classroom teacher and as a reading teacher at a public school in Nova Scotia, then as a classroom teacher at the Smith College Campus School while completing her graduate studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She became a teacher-educator in literacy education at the University of Minnesota. For the last 12 years before retirement, she taught reading assessment and development in the undergraduate teacher education program and directed the Masters' licensure program for Reading Teachers and Specialists at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. She also taught Literacy Foundations, Research, Reading Methods, Assessment & Development, and Children's Literature. She has made many presentations at conferences around the world including Australia, New Zealand, China, Canada, and the Philippines. She is author of Reading with the Troubled Reader, several children's books, and numerous articles and book chapters for researchers, teachers, and parents. Dr. Gay Ward is a Professor Emerita of Teacher Education at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. Gay earned a Bachelor of Art's Degree from Smith College, a graduate diploma of education from Murdoch University in Western Australia, a Master's of Education and Montessori certification from Xavier University and a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Notre Dame Australia. She is an experienced elementary teacher having taught children aged 5-12 in Western Australia where she also taught courses at the University of Notre Dame Australia. She moved to Wisconsin in 2001 to assume a position at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls teaching early childhood and elementary child development, language and literacy courses. She also taught Research Methods to graduate Reading Program and Montessori Program candidates. She coordinated the Early Childhood undergraduate programs and the Montessori Graduate Teacher Education program. Gay has facilitated workshops on literacy in Australia, the United States, Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines. She has published articles on reading, narrative development, choice in learning and joyfulness. She is currently a literacy consultant and a Montessori education consultant.