I was a classroom teacher for a little over 11 years. I taught CTE classes for 9 ½ of those. It brought me great joy to teach students skills they could use immediately—not something they might use one day. I taught everything from Business Software, Finance, and Intro to IT to Business and Entrepreneurship. Students were learning relevant skills they could use the day they learned them!

As my teaching career went on, things seemed to change drastically every few years. I started teaching in a traditional classroom, with all students facing me and using paper and pencil. After a couple of years, I moved to a computer lab. A few years later, all my students received their own iPad, which was an interesting experiment, to say the least – mainly because there were no filters, so keeping students off Netflix in class was one of many issues.

Finally, around 2016, all students received their own laptops. In a way, the timing was great because a few years later, the pandemic hit hard, and this was the only way all students could continue learning from home, if they had an internet connection. While all these technological advances brought new learning opportunities, they also brought distractions. The pandemic knocked many students down a grade level or two in reading (and many were already a grade level or two behind).

By the 2021-2022 school year, the vast majority of my students were either struggling readers, English language learners, or some combination of the two. I had had access to the Immersive Reader in class since 2017 but barely touched it. I didn’t really know what it was and was focused on other things. Once I began taking master’s-level classes myself and had loooong texts to read, with little time to read them with a new baby at home, I started listening to some of the texts.

The Immersive Reader was a game-changer for me! Having experienced the benefits myself, I started demonstrating it to students. I found that if I demonstrated it once, a student or two might use it. But then I started demonstrating it every day. Every time there was a text to read, I would remind them of the Immersive Reader. I let them know it’s not for special needs, but for everyone. “I’m a grown man; I’ve been to college twice, and I use it,” I’d tell them. I’d show them that they can listen to the text, and change the voice from male to female.

I walked them through how they could speed up or slow down the reading. I showed them how they could change the background color—this one especially helps learners with dyslexia. I then walked them through the line focus, which helps them narrow in on one or three lines of text at a time. Finally, my favorite feature was the language option. Many of my students came from Latin America and the Caribbean. A lot of them spoke, read, and wrote Spanish, Portuguese, or Haitian Creole better than English.

I also had one student from Vietnam. Showing them how to access the content in their native language wasn’t just a helpful tool for reading and learning; it became a catalyst for connection with my students in the classroom. Yes, they learned more and were more engaged, but it also enhanced my relationship with these students and let them know they were important to me.

All courses in our new platform, XED, come with the Immersive Reader built in. This makes all of our content accessible to a wider range of learners! In the upper right corner of each page, you will see a little speaker icon . This small icon represents a huge, game-changing tool for your classroom. Get comfortable using it, demonstrating it, and encouraging your learners to utilize it. Then notice the huge difference being made!

If you haven’t started using the Immersive Reader, don’t wait another day!