Gladys Landing-Corretjer

Bio/ Curriculum Vitae

Gladys Landing-Corretjer was born and raised in the island of Puerto Rico. She moved to the continental US 1983 with her husband and children. She has a BA in Psychology from the University of Puerto Rico (1980), two masters’ degree one in Learning Disabilities from Lehman College in New York (1988) and another in Education Leadership from George Mason University, VA( 2002). She also holds a doctorate in Leadership in Teaching and Learning from Walden University (2009).

Bitten by the teaching vocation

It was shortly, after she arrived in NYC, that she became an instructor for Mentally Disabled Adults in Queens. One day, a month or so after working at this institution one of her students learned how to write his name. Stephen wrote and read his name, in his joy for the achievement, he began jumping up and down an running around the classroom.

“At that moment, I understood that my other academic plans to becoming a lawyer and being rich and famous, were a thing of the past. The spiritual joy I received from Stephen learning to write and read his name, were speaking loud and clear to me, and I became a teacher”.

Gladys Landing-Corretjer is a veteran teacher and administrator who has worked for the public school system for 31 years. During her tenure, she worked in New York City, Puerto Rico, and Virginia. As a teacher, she taught all grades, and subjects in elementary school; served as an ESOL, and Special Education teacher, and post graduate school instructor. She has been involved in writing curriculum not only for elementary school but also for post graduate schools. In 2002, she became the first Hispanic School administrator for a school district in Manassas, VA. As an administrator, Dr. Corretjer was very effective at motivating parents, teachers and students to learn. She implemented programs that help parents and students learn to read together, English and technology classes for parents who were not proficient in the language, and increasing parental involvement. She encouraged teachers to pursue graduate courses and degrees, or just read. She made it her mission to recommend books and articles for her staff to read.

It was during her tenure as an administrator that she found her new voice as a student advocate. Encouraging students to read, training teachers in the best teaching reading practices, and promoting book drives in the community was one the highlights of career.

Knowledgeable and passionate about student learning, Dr. Corretjer was a keen observer of the issues affecting student learning in her campus. This awareness is what lead her to research and write this book about homework.

“ My journey began with a simple inquiry prompted when teachers at my school sent students to the assistant principal’s office because they did not complete their homework. Other consequences students received for not completing their homework were missing recess and having lunch with their peers. I saw the same students sent for failure to complete their homework: African-American, English Language Learners, and European-American children who were economically disadvantaged. According to some teachers, the reason these students did not complete their homework was because they lacked of home support. I had a problem! I did not want to counsel children into doing their homework; I had stopped assigning homework to my students 15 years prior my administrator’s assignment. Therefore, I began to ask the students why they did not complete their homework. I gathered some preliminary information about the issue. I learned that it was not lack of home support, but lack of resources. Many students lived in a room or in a basement of another family’s home. Others were homeless, living with different relatives from week to week. The most fortunate lived in a shelter for battered women. Others lived at the “Trailer Park”, where they had to take care of their siblings after school, so the adult in the home could work at night. These were the children who came to my office because they did not do their homework. I do not believe homework would be a priority of mine, if I lived in these circumstances. An indirect consequence of not returning their homework was that they were missing instruction. Something had to be done.

Few years later, I began my doctoral program at Walden University and choose this concern of mine to research and write my dissertation on this topic.”

Dr. Corretjer has been successful in these endeavors because she is a life long learner.She is a teacher at heart, an author, speaker, and a Cognitive Coach. She has taken her message about rigor and fun in learning, all over the country. Her experiences in Education have made her a student advocate and she summed her experiences and research in her books: Please, listen to me: Students’ voices regarding homework (May 2010), and The Truth About Homework from the Students’ Perspective (September 2015).

Gladys Landing-Corretjer retired from Virginia Public Schools last June 2015, and resides with her husband in Myrtle Beach, SC. She continues to voice her message as a student advocate at the invitation of educational organizations. “ Education is the only thing, no one can take away from you”.