About the Author

Monica Sarmiento is an experienced teacher, educational therapist, author, and consultant with deep expertise in early literacy. She is passionate about supporting students in their initial stages of reading acquisition.
As a Special Education Teacher and Educational Therapist in California, Monica holds a master's degree in Educational Psychology from Universidad del Salvador in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a California Credential in Mild and Moderate Disabilities from San Francisco State University. She has taught at a dual-language Spanish immersion school for over 25 years and has worked as an Educational Therapist in private practice since 1986.
Monica's experience in bilingual education has allowed her to work with hundreds of children whose first language is Spanish or English and who struggle with reading.
She has taught reading in both languages and found that while the cognitive mechanisms for learning to read are universal, teaching reading in English differs significantly from teaching it in Spanish. This realization led her to explore the unique characteristics of Spanish literacy instruction. She found that a syllabic approach was far more effective for young learners than methods focusing primarily on phonemes.
This insight inspired her to develop Aprendo, a structured curriculum based on the syllabic method, which has already proven successful for hundreds of students.