Building Your Professional Portfolio Through Personalized Learning

Lori Severino, Ed.D. is a retired Assistant Professor at the School of Education at Drexel University. She teaches courses in reading, high incidence disabilities, and student teaching. Her area of expertise is in reading disabilities. Prior to teaching at Drexel, she was a special education teacher in public education for 26 years. Most of her teaching career was working with students with dyslexia. She is committed to preparing all teachers to be able to teach all students to read. She is a member of the instructional strategies committee of the Philadelphia Readby4th campaign.

Dr. Severino is a certified Wilson Language trainer and teaches the Wilson coursework as well as offering professional development to local districts. Dr. Severino worked with a team of researchers to develop a web-based reading comprehension assessment for adolescents (ACE: Adolescent Comprehension Evaluation). This assessment uses fNIRS (functional near infrared spectroscopy) during the validation process and is a patent-pending process. She is the Co-author of Using Creativity to Address Dyslexia, Dysgraphia and Dyscalculia: Assessments and Techniques. Dr. Severino has presented nationally and internationally at IDA, CLD, and EECERA.

Donna Hejtmanek, M.Ed, retired after 41 years of teaching special education and serving as a reading specialist/ interventionist. She currently serves as President of the Literacy Task Force of Northern Wisconsin, was appointed by Gov. Scott Walker in 2014 to Wisconsin’s Read to Lead Literacy Council and served on The Legislative Council Study Committee on the Identification and Management of Dyslexia in 2018. This resulted in Wisconsin’s first dyslexia bill, Act 86, signed into legislation in 2019.

Hejtmanek was awarded the Herb Kohl Teacher Fellowship Award in 2016 for superior ability to inspire love of learning in students, leadership and service within and outside of the classroom, and ability to motivate others.

She formerly served as legislative chair for the International Dyslexia Association Wisconsin branch. Donna retired in 2018 and she now spends her days creating professional development opportunities for teachers and administers her Facebook group, Science of Reading—What I Should Have Learned in College.