Stephanie Harvey

Steph (right)
with Anne Goudvis

Stephanie Harvey has spent the past thirty years teaching and learning about reading and writing. She received her B.A. from the University of Denver and her M.A. from the University of Colorado.

After fifteen years of regular elementary and special education teaching in the Jefferson County Schools in Lakewood, Colorado, Stephanie became a staff developer for the Denver-based Public Education and Business Coalition (PEBC), a partnership of leaders from education and business who support innovation in public schools. In that role, she has worked with educators throughout Colorado coordinating literacy projects, leading workshops, and conducting classroom demonstrations.

Insatiably curious about student thinking, she is a teacher first and foremost and continues to work in schools on a regular basis, savoring any time spent with kids. Stephanie also serves as a private consultant to schools and districts throughout the country. She travels extensively and works with educators in inner-city, suburban, and rural districts. A regular presenter and keynote speaker at conferences, she speaks on reading comprehension; active literacy; nonfiction reading; writing and research; inquiry based learning; reading and writing workshop; and the role of passion, wonder, and engagement in teaching and learning.

Each summer she offers her annual Reading Is Thinking comprehension institute at different locations throughout the country. As a consultant to the National Geographic Society, she serves on the NGS Literacy Council. Stephanie loves to write and has published articles in Language Arts, Instructor, and other educational publications. Her first book, Nonfiction Matters, was published in 1998 by Stenhouse. That was followed by Strategies That Work, written in collaboration with her colleague Anne Goudvis in 2000. In the spring of 2005, Heinemann FirstHand published The Comprehension Toolkit: Language and Lessons for Active Literacy, a resource for reading comprehension instruction.

Recently, Stephanie and Anne have released a number of videos on reading comprehension, including a single tape called Read Write and Talk with a focus on active literacy, a three-tape series for English Language Learners called Reading the World, and Strategic Thinking, a comprehension series aimed at middle-grade readers.

Additionally, Stephanie serves as a consultant to National Geographic School Publishing on the Reading and Writing Workshops, an intermediate-grade comprehension resource for information literacy.

Stephanie lives in Denver with her husband, Edward, and spends her free time hiking, skiing and reading. She has two grown children, Alex and Jessica.

Audio interview (podcast): Steph and Anne talk about the inspiration behind the second edition of Strategies That Work