For over thirty years, the Centre has provided high quality services to struggling students – an achievement made possible by our teachers (past and present) and exceptional support from a team of highly talented administrative and managerial staff.

The Centre for Literacy was established in Edmonton, Alberta in 1991. It was originally created as a place where highly trained teachers could help struggling readers overcome their barriers to learning. Over time, additional services were added including support in writing and mathematics. Today, the Centre offers a range of services to students of all ages in reading, comprehension, writing, mathematics and executive skill development. 

From the onset and continuing today, the Centre uses teaching methodologies that are effective in supporting students who have learning disabilities/disorders. The organization continues to monitor the peer reviewed literature to ensure that the strategies used are continuously updated to reflect new and emerging developments.

For the past two decades, the Centre has offered quality professional development to educators and other professions about tools and methods for supporting struggling students. We are proud to be able to play a part in teaching teachers the ins and outs of supporting students with learning difficulties. 

Building on decades of experience and teaching excellence, the Centre has expanded in the past five years to produce high quality educational resources and games. These resources are particularly valuable for struggling learners, but are engaging and appealing for most students. 

When the pandemic began in 2020, like many organizations, the Centre needed to think of different ways to offer its services. It rapidly transitioned from predominantly an in-person service, to providing services remotely. Clients have been very positive about remote service delivery; it will remain the predominant method of providing services as we evolve towards a post-pandemic world. 

The change to remote service delivery has better enabled the Centre to support students living outside of the greater Edmonton area. We have continued to work with students remotely as they have moved to different parts of the world. A vivid pandemic memory was the opportunity to resume support for a former student who was in lockdown in Europe during the initial year of the pandemic with his parents who were on sabbatical. We have similarly retained or recruited teachers who live in different communities across Canada. We are proud that our scope of influence and ability to help struggling students is no longer bound by geography and we look forward to the next 30 years of service.