Erik

Erik Lepis is a regional, national, and international presenter and literacy consultant based in New York City, specializing in literacy learning across the K–12 continuum. He works closely with building and district leaders to help administrators develop a vision for literacy instruction, design coherent systems of practice, raise student achievement, and lead school-wide change through the teaching of reading and writing.

Trained in Orton–Gillingham and experienced in structured literacy, Erik bridges foundational reading development with the complex demands of comprehension and composition. His current work expands into secondary education through Critical Literacy, and the Active View of Reading Model (Duke & Cartwright, 2021), which emphasizes active self-regulation as central to skilled reading. He supports educators in translating this model into disciplinary literacy practices that help adolescents read, write, and reason like experts in each content area. Erik works along-side teachers in curriculum writing, demonstration teaching, coaching, and leading study groups in all aspects of literacy implementation.

He co-founded The Living Literacy Network after years of classroom teaching and partnering with both universities and commercial publishers of literacy curriculum products where he deepened his expertise in evidence-based reading and writing instruction and supported teachers in strengthening their literacy ecosystems. He continues to integrate this foundation with emerging reading science to help schools build literate communities where every learner experiences voice, agency, and access. Erik holds advanced degrees in Early Childhood Education and Educational Leadership, a Microcredential in The Fundamentals of the Science of Reading, and Associate Certificate in Orton-Gillingham. He is the co-author of Informational Writing Mini-Lessons: Your Go-To Guide for Flexible, High-Impact Instruction.

More from Erik:

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Engaging Students in Disciplinary Literacy
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Engaging Students in Disciplinary Literacy
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Effective reading instruction in middle and high school isn't just about comprehension—it's about making content accessible and fostering a deep, active relationship with challenging texts within the disciplines. This is the Science of Secondary Reading, and a powerful framework for understanding it is the Active View of Reading (AVR) Model, first introduced by Nell Duke and Kelly Cartright in 2021. An evolution of both the Simple View of Reading and Scarborough’s Reading Rope, the AVR model emphasizes that reading is a dynamic process involving word recognition and language comprehension, interconnected by bridging processes, and guided by the reader's active self-regulation. The latter includes motivation and engagement, executive function skills, and strategy use, which are the engines that drive all other processes and are crucial for a reader's success as they work together to create a holistic reading experience where the reader is not just a passive recipient of information but an active constructor of meaning.

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The Science of Secondary Reading™: Getting Teens to Read, Think, and Engage
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The Science of Secondary Reading™: Getting Teens to Read, Think, and Engage
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The Science of Reading (SOR) movement has reshaped early literacy and brought clarity, coherence, and measurable success to classrooms nationwide. Its foundation in the Simple View of Reading (SVR) along with Scarborough’s Rope model has guided educators toward a more comprehensive approach to literacy instruction that includes teaching the skills necessary for both word recognition and language comprehension. These shifts have brought a more explicit, systematic, and multisensory instructional approach in Word Recognition, resulting in stronger decoding skills. Moreover, teachers have recognized the important role that background knowledge and vocabulary play in reading comprehension over isolated strategy instruction and have made efforts to integrate more knowledge and vocabulary building through interdisciplinary reading instruction. 

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Preserving Authenticity in Writing Instruction
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Preserving Authenticity in Writing Instruction
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While much of the conversation around literacy development has recently focused on revolutionizing the way that we teach reading, much less has been propounded about writing instruction.  Yet, if we were to consider the reciprocal relationship of reading and writing in literacy development, then we must reflect and reevaluate the ways in which we teach writing. 

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Erik .