Birthdays of two contributors
What's not to celebrate about contributions by Janet Lerner and Emily Solari?
At least two people who’ve made wonderful contributions to special education have birthdays on this day (27 June) of the year. Here’s to Janet Lerner and Emily Solari! Let’s have a little Special Education Today celebration!
Janet Lerner
Janet W. Lerner was born 27 June 1926 in Milwaukee. She had a distinguished career as a teacher about and advocate for individuals with learning disabilities. Her 1971 textbook, Learning Disabilities: Theories, Diagnosis, and Teaching Strategies, was one of the most influential books on LD of its time, and she revised it repeatedly.1
When Janet passed away in 2015, I posted a remembrance on the old LDBlog and I republished it here on SET for her birthday in 2024. You can learn more about her by reading Janet Weiss Lerner, 1926-2015: Didn't she provide lots of help for individuals with disabilities?
Emily Solari
Emily Solari also had her birthday on 27 June, and Emily’s still very much alive. Emily completed graduate work at the University of California Santa Barbara, where she worked with SET pal Michael Gerber, before moving to and conducting reading research at the University of Texas at Houston and then joining the faculty at the University of Virginia. Emily has not only conducted exemplary research about literacy, but she’s also helped promote legislative efforts to improve the policies and practices of literacy in schools.
In addition to one noting Emily’s birthday in 2022, there are posts on SET about those efforts (e.g., explaining reading failure and core reading instruction). For readers who want to read some of Emily’s work (including studies about reading for students with autism), here’s a link to the ResearchGate pages about some of her publications2 and a UVA page showing some additional info. For practical resources (and more), see the Virginia Literacy Partnerships.
Footnote
Janede Professor Beverly Johns as a co-author in the last couple of editions. Alert readers will recognize that Bev sometimes drops comments on posts right here on SET.
I hasten to emphasize that only some of her work is featured on ResearchGate She’s remarkably productive, so if you do your own research about her research and you’ll find lots more.