Bringing every strand of reading into harmony
Led by educator and literacy leader Katie Megrian, The Reading Symphony helps parents and schools build confident, joyful readers through the skillful application of evidence-based literacy practices and a career filled with real results.
Meet Katie Megrian
For more than two decades, Katie has lived within the hum of classrooms, from kindergarten carpets lined with alphabet charts to high school seminars filled with complex texts and college-ready readers. She has taught nearly every grade from kindergarten through twelfth and supported teachers as both a founding teacher and principal.
Katie’s understanding of literacy as a gateway to opportunity and freedom began long before her first classroom. One summer in college, she worked for her father’s law office, helping clients complete forms and read legal documents they could not read on their own. She remembers sitting across the table from adults who were bright, capable, and deeply frustrated by print that shut them out. That experience never left her. It taught her that reading is not only an academic skill but also a form of access, dignity, and independence.
Over the years, Katie has seen what happens when research and practice finally meet. As a K–12 literacy leader, she has helped one of the highest-performing school districts in the country grow even stronger through a massive curriculum shift and a renewed focus on the Science of Reading. She has witnessed how clarity and coherence can transform entire systems and how joyful, evidence-based instruction changes both student outcomes and teacher morale.
Katie is also a mom to two young readers. One of her daughters has moved through the process easily, finding joy in words and stories almost from the start. The other has had to fight for every step. Watching her struggle, and then grow through skilled teaching and patient practice, has deepened Katie’s understanding of what families feel when the path to reading is uncertain. It reminded her that research alone is not enough; families need hope, clarity, and practical guidance they can trust.
Katie founded The Reading Symphony to bring that full arc of literacy development to life for both families and schools. She wanted a place where parents could finally understand what teachers mean by phoneme segmentation or morphological awareness, and where teachers could see that continual professional growth is not only essential for student success but also for their own fulfillment and sense of purpose.
The name reflects how Katie and The Reading Symphony team see it all: as a symphony. Each strand—phonics, fluency, vocabulary, knowledge, comprehension—has its own part. When those strands come into alignment, something remarkable happens.
OUR EXPERIENCE
Real Results, Rooted in Research
Over 20 years of results that speak for themselves:
Founded and led two top-performing schools in Boston
Helped students outperform state ELA averages by double digits
Ranked top 5 in Massachusetts for student growth in literacy
Guided teachers across K–12 in building evidence-based reading systems
Today, The Reading Symphony helps educators, leaders, and parents translate that evidence base into practice that feels clear, doable, and deeply human.
Our Philosophy
We bridge what’s often separated — the science and the soul of reading.
Reading is not magic or innate. It is a process rooted in complex brain science and requires explicit, intentional instruction. Every child can learn to read when instruction is consistently high-quality, evidence-based, systematic, and knowledge-rich.
Too often, we separate what belongs together: the research lab and the classroom, the cognitive and the emotional, the phonics and the knowledge, the comprehension and the writing, the skill and the purpose, the home and the school. Our work restores that balance. It bridges the research that defines how reading develops with the relationships that make children want to learn.
We believe literacy is a civil right.
We also believe the act of reading, when taught with care, intention, and expertise, can awaken imagination, empathy, and joy. Reading is freedom.
Our purpose is to make evidence-based literacy simple, actionable, and inspiring for both parents and schools.
When adults understand how reading develops, children thrive.
And when children read with confidence, their entire world expands.
Together, we can ensure every child learns to read with confidence and joy.
Ready to strengthen literacy in your home or school?
Partner with The Reading Symphony to make reading simple, joyful, and effective for every child.