About the Author
Shireen
Shuster, the author of Spellzone is a qualified teacher who initially
trained to teach in primary schools. She was a class teacher with this
age group for 15 years, in England and in RAF children's schools in Germany
and Singapore. During these years she gradually gained an interest in
children with literacy difficulties and eventually chose to specialise
in this area.
Since then Shireen has been head of a special needs department in a large primary school and has been acting headteacher of a school for children with psychiatric problems. She has worked for a Local Education Authority advisory service, assessing children with learning problems, devising work programmes for them, organising and supervising their individual tuition. This post also involved running in-service courses for teachers on several aspects of special needs and in training teachers to run the new national tests.
More recently, Shireen has specialised almost entirely in dyslexia and
has been involved in:
- Teaching dyslexic students from age 7 to adult
- The training of classroom teachers in dyslexia awareness and ways of helping
- The training of specialist tutors in structured, multi-sensory methods of teaching dyslexic children
- Writing spelling materials both for dyslexic students and for mainstream classes
Teacher training:
| 1960-62 | Margaret McMillan College of Education, Bradford | |
Additional Specialist Qualifications:
| 1975-76 | Open University | Certificate in "Reading Development" |
| 1986-87 |
Leeds University |
Post Graduate Advanced Diploma in Education of Children with Special Needs (Distinction) |
| 1992-93 |
Dyslexia Institute, Harrogate |
British Dyslexia Association Diploma in Teaching of Children with Specific Learning Difficulties (Distinction) |