My wife was also a teacher. She is wonderful.  If I had not married Ruth, I would have eaten garbage and died by now!   She is a great cook and my colesterol level is perfect.  

Ruth taught first grade for a number of years and then took time off to raise our children. We both had received our Masters in The Teaching of Reading in 1974. When Ruth began to think about returning to teaching, our local district was advertising for someone to train as a Reading Recovery Teacher Leader. It was as if someone was God was watching over Ruth when they made the job description. She went through a year of intense training, in which she came home day after day totally amazed. She was working with the bottom four students in a local first grade. She kept saying, "I am learning how to teach kids to read!" (As a side bar, we are not too slouchy in the teaching of reading and even ran a reading clinic in town for years. But this was different. This time she was "learning how to teach kids to read".)

Since her training year Ruth trained a class each year, with teachers driving for miles from other districts to attend. After eight years she was just as excited as that first year because she was teaching teachers and learning more herself each day about Teaching Kids To Read. If you or your district is thinking about Reading Recovery, take it from the Beckmans... you will learn how to teach kids to read.

Now that we are retired, Ruth loves to dig in the dirt.   She grows flowers, trees, berries, gardens and is a happy girl.     She is also very involved in our church in projects and spiritual growth.

Home