Merry Komar




Merry Komar was born and raised in Hawaii where she began her teaching career and received her master’s degree. As a teacher there, she had extensive literacy training as a participant in the Kamehameha Elementary Education Program (KEEP) for at-risk students, which included strategies for effective language instruction with a focus on writing as well as classroom management and organization. She was selected to be part of the KEEP Demonstration Classroom Project, which required careful monitoring of instruction and student progress using portfolio assessments. She received commendation for the success of her students, her innovation, and her reflective practices. 

As a native from the island of Oahu, she was Hawaii State Hula Hoop Champion and married her college sweetheart (a Wisconsinite). She taught in Hawaii for five years before they moved to Wisconsin. She has taught in Wisconsin for two decades plus, and it is where she and her husband, Vince, raised their two children. She and her husband are now happily empty nesters and are enjoying this new season in their lives. She has climbed Eagle’s Nest located on the Air Force Academy grounds in Colorado Springs, jumped off the rock in Waimea Bay, Hawaii (several times at the age of fifty-plus), and cheered on the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field in the frozen tundra for twenty-plus glorious years. Merry currently teaches third grade in Wisconsin.

Titles by Author (shown below):
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Engaging Literate Minds
Engaging Literate Minds
Peter Johnston, Kathy Champeau, Andrea Hartwig, and Sarah Helmer
Paperback
$50.00 $37.50 Save $12.50
Peter Johnston, Kathy Champeau, Andrea Hartwig, and Sarah Helmer:::100050

Engaging Literate Minds

9781625311627

$50.00 $37.50 Save $12.50
Increasingly, educators are recognizing that for children to thrive intellectually they need socially and emotionally healthy classrooms. Conveniently, this is exactly what parents have always wanted for their children—classrooms that offer and grow positive relationships and behavior, emotional self-regulation, and a sense of well-being.

Using the guiding principles from Peter Johnston’s best-selling professional resources, Choice Words and Opening Minds, Peter and six colleagues began a journey to create just such classrooms—environments in which children meaningfully engage with each other through reading, writing, making, and discussing books.

Together, they bring you Engaging Literate Minds: Developing Children's Social, Emotional, and Intellectual Lives, K-3 where you’ll discover how these teachers struggled and succeeded in building such classrooms. Inside you’ll find the following:

  • Practical ways to develop a caring learning community and children's socio-emotional competence
  • Powerful teaching practices from real classrooms
  • Engaging ways to encourage inquiry and student agency
  • Suggestions on how to use formative assessment in everyday teaching practices
  • Helpful research behind the classroom practices and children’s development
  • Ways to help students inspire and support each other

Building a just, caring, literate society has never been more important than it is today. By embracing the ideas and teaching strategies in Engaging Literate Minds, you can help children to become socially, emotionally, and intellectually healthy. Not only do these classroom practices develop the skills to achieve district benchmarks and beyond, they help develop children’s humanity.

Engaging Literate Minds