The Goyen Foundation is dedicated to student and teacher voice. The Goyen Literacy Fellowship amplifies teacher voice to improve early literacy education. We focus on the real-world needs and lived experiences of learners and educators.

We imagine a future where every teacher has the knowledge, tools, and support to help their students become strong and joyful readers and writers, no matter the structural barriers they face. Teacher voice is essential because we know that literacy education cannot change without teachers who believe it must.

In just over a year, we have paid and trained over two dozen expert literacy teachers to share videos and photos of their teaching, so other teachers can learn from them. Our fellows are inspiring others to change their teaching and try evidence-based techniques in their classrooms. We have ambitious plans to scale this approach.

Teacher voice is both a vision and an implementable strategy. It’s where we need to go: collaboration between skillful, curious teachers is at the center of any successful educational movement. And it’s how we get there: our grassroots approach is necessary because if teachers don’t believe in a vision, it won’t happen.