BY KAREN BOSSICK

Narda Pitkethly has gone into Idaho prisons to teach reading to those who struggled through 20 or 30 years of life without knowing how to read.

And she’s used her Nardagani system to teach elementary school students who were told they’d never learn how to read.

Now she’s launched a Kickstarter campaign so she can take Nardagani into more classrooms to reach as many people as possible.

Narda Pitkethly says Nardagani provides the training wheels for reading.

She reached her original Kickstarter goal of $75,000 in less than a week. But, she says, the more funds she raises by March 5 the more she can spread her program around.

“We have the method, we have the proof. Now, it’s time to scale up. Funding will enable us to bring this method to schools, learning centers, detention centers and homes around the world,” she said. “And funding will allow us to market it to let people know about it.”

Pitkethly, a longtime Wood River Valley resident, began developing the system 27 years ago after watching her own daughter struggle to read. Having lived in Japan, she was inspired by Hiragana, a system developed to help people decode the complex characters in the Japanese language by using simple a visual code.

English is no less complicated, she said.

Narda Pitkethly has worked with countless children—and adults—who have experienced frustration in learning to read.

She pointed to the letter “H.” In “horse,” it’s straightforward. In “teeth,” it softens. In “feather,” it shifts. In “Christmas,” it nearly disappears. In “phone,” it becomes “f.” In “laugh,” it’s “gh.”

“Multiply this by every letter, every exception, every silent syllable, and it’s no wonder millions of students struggle,” she said.

In response, Pitkethly created 12 easy-to-learn symbols that guide readers through silent letters, tricky combinations like “ph” and “ough” and a language in which one letter, like “o,” can have five different sounds.

Nardagani puts these symbols, which look like such things as squares, triangles and diamonds, beneath words to denote the different sounds.

Narda Pitkethly has devoted 27 years to developing her system of reading and making it available on accessible platforms.

“The symbols are like training wheels on a bicycle. Eventually, those using Nardagani no longer need the symbols as they move into reading everything,” she said.

One of Pitkethly’ first clients was a 12-year-old Hailey boy who was autistic.

“His teachers say he may never learn to read,” his desperate grandmother told Pitkethly. “It would be a miracle if you could teach him to read.”

The boy couldn’t even read “a” or “it.” But, after five lessons, he was reading five-letter words, beaming as he read his first book--about a yellow puppy named Biscuit.

Nardagani was approved by the Idaho State Department of Education in 2012. And in 2017 she described Nardagani at Sun Valley TEDx, the YouTube video of that receiving nearly 1.5 million views.

Since, Pitkethly has spent the past few years finetuning her system and putting some snappy graphics behind it. She built an interactive online version of the program, which has reached thousands of people in nearly 77 countries.

And she competed a learning app this past year that is being used by people ranging in age from 3 to 100.

The app, which can be downloaded from the App Store, is free so people can play with it to see how they like it. If they wish to continue, they can pay $9.99 a month to learn the entire program. Those who go through the nine levels also can access books created with Nardagani symbols so they can continue to practice reading and gain more confidence.

“We’ve done pilot programs in schools, detention centers and foreign countries. Most students of all ages increase their reading by two grade levels in two months so it’s highly successful,” said Pitkethly. “Pretty much every person who has found who has found our program learned to read.”

The consequences for a population that can’t read can be dire.

Seventy percent of so-called juvenile delinquents are functionally illiterate. Eighty-five percent of prison inmate are functionally illiterate, unable to read above third-grade level, according to the National Assessment of Adult Literary.

Two-thirds of students who can’t read proficiently by the end of the fourth grade will end up in jail or on welfare. Yet 66 percent of fourth-graders are not reading at grade level, said Pitkethly.

Conversely, inmates who get help learning to read have just a 16 percent chance of returning to prison as opposed to the 70 percent who receive no help.

“Educators have spent decades battling about how to teach reading. Some have touted phonics but that is complicated with numerous rules and exceptions to the rule. And   whole language learning involves students using pictures to recognize words rather than learning to sound them out. This works until third grade then gets complicated,” she said

“We hit our goal so quickly because this mission truly resonates—people are rallying around the importance of reaching challenged readers. Now we’re pushing beyond the goal to expand our impact even further. The more we raise, the more people we can serve.”

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Visit www.nardagani.com and watch the TEDx talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0o3uKaEZcM.

Questions? Contact Narda Pitkethly at narda@nardagani.com.

The Nardagani app, available at the App store, offers free access to early reading levels. It costs $9.99 a month for those who wish to continue.

To donate to the kickstarter campaign, go to https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1247083253/read-nardagani-reading-english-made-easy?ref=ucijp6.