It’s said that you can’t really understand a person until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. That’s just one of the many things that make Wilson® Literacy Specialists and Literacy Advisors like Misty Castillo so very special—they have done this many times over! Our dedicated team of implementation support coaches are all former teachers themselves, bringing decades of classroom experience to the role.
Thank you, Misty, for sharing a bit of your background, expertise, and stories from the frontlines with us!
I’ve taught everything under the sun including Head Start, kindergarten, first and third grades, and junior high social studies. I also served as a reading specialist for K-6 students, high school substitute, district reading coach, and Title I district program specialist. Each of these roles enriched my understanding of education and solidified my desire to help students achieve literacy success.
What drew me to Wilson was our shared commitment to provide Structured Literacy programs that genuinely work. I wanted to be part of a team that equips educators and students across the U.S. with the tools they need to succeed.
I support school and district leaders by helping them explore, orient, and prepare for program implementation that meets their specific literacy needs. By sharing my gift of knowledge, I help schools create lasting, meaningful change for their students.
The most rewarding part of my role is walking through classrooms with principals and literacy coaches and witnessing the success of program implementation. Seeing students engaged, confident, and demonstrating automaticity with reading and spelling during a Fundations® lesson brings me so much joy.
The greatest success stories always come from my Wilson Reading System® Level I Certification participants. Their excitement about their students’ amazing progress—and the realization of how certification has elevated their teaching—continues to inspire me.
Wilson programs work because they are rooted in the best evidence-based practices of Structured Literacy instruction. They provide clear, explicit teaching direction while also allowing educators the flexibility to offer diagnostic, differentiated instruction tailored to their students’ needs.
Teachers rave about the hands-on literacy manipulatives that promote multimodal instruction. These tools are phenomenal for all learners, and I hear time and again about the positive impact Wilson programs have on students’ confidence in reading and spelling. It opens a whole new world!
The interactive Teacher’s Manual in FUN HUB® has amazing embedded assistive videos that make learning new concepts and activities easier for educators. The new Fundations Readers are fantastic for culturally inclusive, targeted practice aligned with the Fundations Scope and Sequence.
I’ve found that vocabulary and word structure discussions can be incredibly powerful to help struggling readers. The Wilson Reading System is my favorite resource for this work because it moves at the student’s pace, ensuring mastery of concepts.
If you are implementing a Wilson program for the first time, give yourself grace. Learning the content and instructional principles takes time, but trust the process—you’ll master it, just like learning to ride a bike.
If I could go back in time, I’d tell my younger self to focus on foundational skills and provide specific, targeted practice.
As a child, my favorite book was The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and I dreamed of becoming a nurse. However, a class on child psychology sparked my passion for teaching, and the rest is history.