At age 60, instead of retiring, former Superintendent of Schools Janet N. Mort enrolled in a PhD Early Literacy program to research why over 35% of struggling children do not succeed in school. Within in seven years she had completed her analysis of the most compelling recent literacy research, designed the Joyful Literacy Framework, and implemented it in over a hundred primary pilot classrooms where data was collected by external examiners for the first four years of Joyful Literacy implementation.

The results exceeded expectations. School Superintendent Lambie chose to participate in the pilot out of frustration that only 49.8% of her grade four students were achieving at provincially designated grade level expectations. The Joyful Literacy Framework was implemented with students entering Kindergarten in 2013. Implementation was continued through to the year they entered grade four where, after five years of the Joyful Literacy Framework, the students’ success rate had risen to 85%.