Elaine Marjorie Acker Albert

Albert, Elaine Marjorie Acker,
Kalamazoo, MI Passed away on 2007-12-17 at Bronson Hospital after an extended illness. She is survived by sons James Kathryn, William Linda and John, a sister Wilma Robert Evans, four granddaughters, and 6 great-grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her husband James, another son Michael, a sister Janet Weigand and a brother Alfred Acker. Elaine was born 1908-12-24 in East Orange, NJ, to Albert J Acker and Marguerite Ihlefeld. She earned her AB from Western College for Women and her MA from Bread Loaf School of English. Elaine spent a lifetime passionately interested in education, in particular literacy. Her early years were spent teaching Jr. High school English in Muskegon, MI, where she first became interested in Phonics for teaching reading, an approach then being phased out. After marriage in 1942, she moved to Kalamazoo and spent two decades as a mother and homemaker. During this period she continued her education via correspondences courses from the University of Chicago, and further developed her teaching skills by in part home-schooling her children. Subsequently she returned to work as an assistant professor in the English department of Western Michigan University until her retirement in December 1978. During this time her interest in teaching reading via Phonics continued to grow, and became a serious study after the publication in 1955 of Why Johnny Can?t Read by Rudolph Flesch, with whom she later carried on a professional correspondence. She recovered pre-20th-century teaching methods from historical documents and in 1986 first published How the Alphabet Works: A Handbook for Teaching Someone to Read, based on the 15th Century Hornbook. In ?retirement?, she continually refined her methods in favor of shorter, clearer, and more effective lessons, aimed at professional and amateur teachers alike. The current version, Kitchen Table Phonics, has successfully been used by children to teach other children to read. Throughout, she self-published rather than deal with editorial interference, and personally distributed over 39, 000 copies before she lost count of the total. Her hobbies included creative writing, photography, painting, reading, knitting, and pot gardening. In accordance with her wishes, cremation has taken place and no service will be held. The arrangements were handled by Langeland Family Funeral Homes, Memorial Chapel, 622 S. Burdick St. In lieu of flowers, memorials can be made to Hillsdale College, in Hillsdale MI. www.langelands.com . 343-2508.