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A blog that looks behind the scenes at how we bring our mission to life, every day

Jj Gilmartin ‹ We are EF

Creating a more sustainable world starts with seemingly small actions that create ripples of awareness, inspiration, and change. Like tossing a pebble into water, a small action makes an impact that spreads far beyond its origin point.

Amit, a Procurement Specialist in the <a href="https://www.ef.com/"> EF Education First </a> Panama City office, is spreading sustainability awareness and making ripples of change in his community. He builds tours for student travelers and started his local chapter of the EF Green Team, a staff collective focused on inspiring eco-conscious habits at EF and beyond. His goal is not to save the world; his goal is to show people the small changes they can make in their lives and their communities that add up to a big impact.

Raised in Portugal by a mother from India and a father from Mozambique, Amit first heard about EF while living in Barcelona. A friend there worked for an EF language school in England and mentioned it a few times. Amit did not think much about it until he moved to Panama in 2017 (after stints in Colorado, Abu Dhabi, and Nigeria). The newly opened EF Panama office was hiring, and Amit asked his old friend if it was the same company she liked so much. When she said it was, he applied.

Amit started at EF Educational Tours in 2018 producing travel experiences for students in Belize, Dominican Republic, Colombia, and, of course, Panama. He began his environmental efforts soon after arriving, bringing a container to the EF Panama office to collect and recycle cans.

“I got nervous because I was new,” he remembers. “But because this is such a small office, if you have an idea, you can just bring it up. It helped that EF is on the same page about sustainability.”

Today, the Panama office has separate, large bins for recycling cans, paper, glass, and plastics that keep waste out of landfills. More importantly, the recycling program opens team members' eyes to how much trash they generate every day.

Amit also organizes beach cleanups for students, teachers, and colleagues with local NGO Ramsar-CREHO, with whom EF has a long-standing partnership. Seeing what human garbage does to beautiful Panamanian beaches inspires participants to reconsider their environmental footprints.

Whenever he can, Amit orchestrates local mangrove reforestation projects for his officemates, as well as students traveling on EF Educational Tours’ STEM Tours, experiential learning trips designed for students interested in STEM. The work occurs in an area designated for EF by Panama’s Ministry of Environment. However, the sounds of chainsaws echo through the same mangrove forest where they plant propagules, leaving participants with a deeper understanding of the complex challenges in addressing climate change. Most importantly, it leaves them with greater awareness of how much their efforts are needed.

Amit is also the leader of the Panamanian chapter of EF Cares, EF’s global volunteer program for staff. The EF Cares team in Panama has donated school supplies to students in remote Panamanian villages along the Colombian border. They have also brought toys, clothes, and sanitary supplies to an indigenous community three hours outside Panama City. They organize clothing and food drives for local people in need. Like the beach cleanups, recycling program, and reforestation projects, Amit believes the experience leads donors to reevaluate their priorities.

“We’re not going to completely change the world,” Amit notes. “But whenever we do these events, it wakes up something in people. I hope that future generations, and even the current ones, start changing their lives little by little. Even the smallest thing, it’s going to help.

Meet Amit, an EF team member leading sustainability efforts through his daily role, causing a ripple effect of change in the world around him.

Ripples of change: Small ways to make a big difference with Amit

Joel Hladecek knows how to make all your problems at work go away. He also knows how to get your dream job and get promoted. Especially for professional creatives.
Who is Joel, you ask? He is <a href="https://www.ef.com/wwen/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">EF Education First</a>‘s Worldwide Creative Officer, and he recently shared his perspectives in the first installment of EF’s new “Education for Life” virtual learning series. His online talk, “The 5 Things Professional Creatives Need to Know,” was geared toward people who work in design and other creative fields. But, many of the lessons apply to anyone looking to build a successful and rewarding career.
Despite the title, Joel offered far more than five things, including useful nuggets for everyone from those looking for their first creative roles to executives managing global creative teams. Some highlights include:
People who make things versus people who direct people who make things.
Joel refers to this as “The Wall,” an invisible and ubiquitous barrier sitting in the middle of the typical creative career path. At first, people succeed based on their talents as individual designers, writers, videographers, and artists.
On the other side of The Wall — the side most junior creatives are taught to aspire to reach — success depends on their ability to inspire and guide others. Their medium becomes other people, and the distinction is critical for everyone who works in a creative field.
Never say, “Make the logo bigger.”
According to Joel, bad film directors tell actors how to read their lines. Great directors explain the character, the scene, and the backstory and let the actors do what they do best.
“You can’t give your designers or artists or other talent line readings,” Joel says. “If you’re giving feedback to your creative team, focus on the strategic reason that a change needs to be made, not the actual change or solution that you want because that’s their job.”
“Don’t be too eager to leave behind the tools that made you love what you are doing.”
Many creatives want to get promoted to the other side of The Wall so badly that they sacrifice what inspired them to pursue a creative career in the first place.
They reach for jobs they will not enjoy and are unlikely to succeed at simply because the system does not value individual contributors enough. This needs to be fixed.
“No” is common in the business world, but it is only a step on the way to “yes.”
When someone says “no” it means there is something you have not done yet. Recognizing this makes each “no” less painful and gives you control of your destiny.
As Joel says, “Knowing that you have the ability to turn a ‘no’ into a ‘yes’ keeps you calm. It allows you to stay creative, think logically, and solve those problems so that you can eventually get to yes.”
It’s a thin line between innovation and failure.
If you want to do something genuinely new and innovative, Joel believes, “the right feeling is that you’re slightly terrified that you’re going to fail and the whole thing is going to blow up. The problem with this, of course, is that that’s also exactly what actual failure feels like.” You have to take that chance if you want to learn and grow.
“Companies are big, dumb, lumbering animals.” 
These might seem like harsh words from someone who <a href="https://ef.design/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">oversees creative teams</a> for a 55-year-old education organization with schools and offices in 50 countries. The point is that when you are a creative, your ideas always move faster than the company you work for can. You need to accept that if you want to thrive.
As for how to solve all your problems, get a job, and get promoted, let’s just say the answers come down to great work, patience, research, relationships, and doing the job you want. You didn’t think we’d give it all away here, did you?
<a href="https://youtu.be/lQqfa8qTJMY" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Watch Joel’s full talk on YouTube now</a> and follow EF on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/ef-education-first/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a> to stay in the loop for future installments of Education for Life.

Joel Hladecek knows how to make all your problems at work go away. He also knows how to get promoted.The 5 things professional creatives need to know.

Joel Hladecek knows how to make all your problems at work go away. He also knows how to get promoted. Especially for creative professionals.

The 5 things professional creatives need to know - We are EF

The 5 things professional creatives need to know ‹ We are EF

The 5 things professional creatives need to know

How do you overhaul a technology system with thousands of users around the world and quickly make it more nimble, scalable, and efficient? For <a href="https://www.ef.com/wwen/pg/learn-language/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">EF International Language Campuses</a> Chief Information Officer Patrick Kammermann, it comes down to people, partners, and passion.
Kammermann and his team are radically updating the technology platform behind <a href="https://www.ef.com/wwen/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">EF Education First</a>’s language schools, which span more than 50 destinations and offer over 150 different study programs to students from several dozen countries.
The goal is “perfect personalisation,” according to a recent <a href="https://www.b2e-media.com/magazines/education-first-brochure-2020" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Interface Magazine</a> article. In a not-too-distant future, EF International Language Campuses aims to deliver a unique experience to each customer at every stage of their relationship with us – from marketing and sales to classrooms and online learning.
<div class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_17570" style="width: 578px"><img alt="student learning online" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-17570" class="wp-image-17570 size-full" height="362" sizes="(max-width: 568px) 100vw, 568px" src="https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pk-technology-blog-2.jpg" srcset="https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pk-technology-blog-2.jpg 568w, https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pk-technology-blog-2-300x191.jpg 300w" width="568">In response to COVID-19, EF International Language Campuses moved the majority of their students online to continue to learn a language from home.</div>
Achieving the vision requires people with a can-do attitude. “There’s no such thing as ‘it’s not my job’ here,” says Kammermann. “We all do what needs to be done. It’s part of an entrepreneurial culture.”
How does Kammermann find the right people? “Of course, the technical skills need to be there,” he says, “But passion is always critical.”
This passion-fueled approach was on full display when Covid-19 forced EF to shut down language school campuses starting in February. Over one weekend, they launched three “e-campuses”, moved thousands of students to online learning, and helped every teacher whose local classrooms had closed begin working remotely. You can’t pull that off if you are apathetic.
It also takes great partners since EF’s tech transformation relies on a “cloud-exclusive” strategy using software-as-a-service. We seek out partners who share our passion and tap their technical know-how to get exactly what we need. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hats-off-headless-cms-jon-simpson/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">This article by Jon Simpson</a>, Chief Architect at EF International Language Campuses, offers an inside look at how it works.
In the end, Kammermann wants to use technology to make a bigger, more positive impact on our customers. With the right people, passion, and partners, his team is getting it done. And they are hiring.
<a href="https://www.b2e-media.com/magazines/education-first-brochure-2020" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Read “Staying Small While Growing Big,” featuring Patrick Kammerman, in Interface Magazine.</a>

The team is radically updating the technology platform for EF Education First's language programs spanning more than 50 destinations.

Technology the EF way: A platform built on people and passion - We are EF

Technology the EF way: A platform built on people and passion ‹ We are EF

Technology the EF way: A platform built on people and passion

Technology platform built on people and passion

Steph has held five different positions and worked in two countries during her first six and a half years at <a href="https://www.ef.com/wwen/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">EF Education First</a>. This winding path has led her directly to a vital role in the organization that aligns perfectly with her strengths and interests — Steph is helping EF diversify our talent pool. In other words, our mission is to open the world through education, and Steph is on a mission to bring more of the world to EF. 
Steph started with EF in 2014 in a sales role with <a href="https://www.goaheadtours.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">EF Go Ahead Tours</a> in the Boston office. While it was clear she belonged at EF, she quickly realized she didn’t belong in sales. “I loved talking to customers, but I didn’t love the role. I wasn’t the best at it,” she admits. 
Her manager noticed Steph had a knack for operations and suggested she try her hand as an Office Coordinator, greeting staff and guests at the front desk. “I instantly realized this was perfect for me,” she says of the position. “I enjoyed that it was operational, and I liked being a resource for everyone.” 
<img alt="Steph Profile" class="aligncenter wp-image-18410 size-full" height="362" sizes="(max-width: 568px) 100vw, 568px" src="https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Staff-Profile-Blog-Steph-2.jpg" srcset="https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Staff-Profile-Blog-Steph-2.jpg 568w, https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Staff-Profile-Blog-Steph-2-300x191.jpg 300w" width="568">
At the front desk, Steph got to see job candidates drawn to EF’s Boston office from all over the East Coast. “It piqued my interest in hiring people to work at EF,” she says.  
Steph wanted to give recruiting a try full-time and help candidates see how exciting it is to work at a company that thinks about employees as unique individuals. In true EF style, she raised her hand. The Recruiting and Development (RED) team invited Steph to help out at a local career fair. “It was awesome!” Steph says. “I got to talk to students for eight hours a day about why they should work at EF.” 
Lucky for Steph, a position on the Boston RED team soon opened up. In July 2016, she began to help with EF staff recruiting and onboarding across the U.S. as a Recruiting and Benefits Coordinator.  
A year later, the recruiting team in the EF Toronto office needed support. Steph began providing administrative help from Boston and traveling to Toronto to help run interviews and networking events. After a few months, she had made her mark. The offer to transition from her role on Boston’s RED team into a Recruitment & Employee Experience Manager in Toronto became available. Steph leapt at the opportunity.  
The chance to move to Toronto came as a bit of a surprise to Steph, who hadn’t considered moving to Canada until she was asked about the role. “A lot of people thought I was crazy,” she laughs. “But I knew I loved EF, and this was the perfect job.” 
Over the next two and half years, Steph established a new structure and strategy for hiring entry-level talent in Toronto, highlighting the inclusivity and opportunities to work toward your own strengths that made EF so right for her. She built partnerships with a wide range of universities and made it her goal to connect with students individually rather than relying on a school’s reputation to dictate a candidate’s perceived potential.  
“I’ve always been the kind of person who wants to see other people be the best versions of themselves. I don’t care what you studied at school. I don’t care where you went to school. Other things will make you successful in a role. And so that’s always how I’ve recruited: I’m going to talk to you about you,” Steph said. 
Steph’s broad view of where and how to find the best talent helped EF hire employees that the company might not otherwise have discovered. 
<img alt="Steph Profile" class="aligncenter wp-image-18411 size-full" height="362" sizes="(max-width: 568px) 100vw, 568px" src="https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Staff-Profile-Blog-Steph-3.jpg" srcset="https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Staff-Profile-Blog-Steph-3.jpg 568w, https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Staff-Profile-Blog-Steph-3-300x191.jpg 300w" width="568">
About a year ago, Boston’s RED team took the next step in its commitment to diversifying our workforce with a specific focus on entry-level talent for sales and service roles. Due to Steph’s success in Canada, there was no better person to spearhead the effort. With a Canadian “eh” now infused into her everyday speak, Steph returned to Boston in February 2020 as a Recruitment Manager. She is focusing on diversity hiring and reengineering how EF approaches entry-level recruitment. 
As exciting as the role is, and as perfectly it fits her passions and experiences, it is not easy to overhaul a recruitment process while navigating significant challenges brought on by the pandemic, including limited roles to fill and everyone working from home. Still, Steph has taken this opportunity to be extra creative and tenacious.  
By hosting online info sessions and sales workshops, Steph developed a wider presence than is possible when everything is in-person, reaching a broader and deeper pool of candidates. Because of Steph’s innovation, there is now a pipeline of excited and diverse top-tier candidates to fill future roles.  
Of course, Steph remains focused on connecting with students on an individual level. “You can’t help where you can afford to go to school, and so what? It doesn’t matter. If you have the things we’re looking for and you’re excited to learn and own your work, then you’re going to be a good fit here.” 
Steph’s focus on assessing each candidate for who they are and what they stand for enriches and diversifies EF. She looks forward to applying her entry-level recruitment strategy framework to build partnerships that connect EF with a more diverse range of talent at the mid and senior levels. 
“For us to be the company we want to be, we need to have diversity at all levels,” Steph says. “I’m queer and mixed, so it’s important for me to see someone who is queer and/or mixed at a senior level and to see decision-makers with diverse backgrounds and thoughts.”  
When Steph started as an entry-level sales associate with EF Go Ahead Tours, she never imagined she would be such an important and appreciated voice for diversity and inclusion at all levels of the company just a few years later. But if there’s one thing Steph has learned at EF, it’s to always say “yes” to a new opportunity. “Even if it doesn’t make sense at that point,” she says, “Someone is putting your name out there and thinks you’d be a great fit for a position or sees something in you that you might not.” 
These days, as she recruits talent from an ever-expanding range of backgrounds and experiences, Steph is thrilled to help others realize their potential. It feels like a role she was destined for from the start. 
Steph’s original story from 2018: 
Steph’s career at <a href="https://www.ef.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">EF Education First</a> actually began with an interview at a large financial firm. A friend from university suggested Steph apply, so she gave it a shot. But when Steph sat down for her interview and began talking about studying abroad, travel, and education, it was clear she was in the wrong office.
“The person I interviewed with just kind of said, ‘Hmm, well, that’s interesting, but this doesn’t sound like the right job for you,’” Steph says, smiling. “Then she asked, ‘have you heard of EF?’”
From the moment she learned about EF, Steph felt it was an ideal fit and made it her (successful) mission to get a job there. She started in a sales role with <a href="https://www.goaheadtours.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">EF Go Ahead Tours</a> in the Boston office, and while it was clear she belonged at EF, she quickly realized she didn’t belong in sales. “I loved talking to customers, but I didn’t love the role; I wasn’t the best at it,” she admits.
Her manager noticed Steph had a knack for operations, so she suggested Steph try her hand as an Office Coordinator, greeting staff and guests at the front desk. “I instantly realized this was perfect for me,” she says of the position. “I enjoyed that it was operational, and I liked being a resource for everyone.”
At the front desk, Steph got to see job candidates come and go, drawn to EF’s Boston office from all over the East Coast. “It piqued my interest in hiring people to work at EF,” she says. “Working at the front desk exposed me to that world of recruiting.”
Steph wanted to give it a try, so in true EF style, she raised her hand. The Recruiting and Development (RED) team invited Steph to help out at a local career fair—Steph was immediately hooked. “It was awesome!” Steph says. “I got to talk to students for eight hours a day about why they should work at EF.”
Lucky for Steph, a position on the RED team soon opened up, and she began to help with EF staff recruiting and onboarding across the U.S. “I would make sure the paperwork for new hires got taken care of, and I’d lead new-hire orientation on Mondays. I did a lot of the processing to get new staff set up.”
Along the way, Steph saw an opportunity. “It started with a RED team meeting, talking about how new staff would come in and we’re a huge resource at the beginning, but we don’t hear from them again until they’ve decided to leave,” she explains. Steph pitched the idea to create a check-in to get staff feedback on how their jobs were going.
The RED team launched a group breakfast to do just that, celebrating new hires’ 90-day marks while also providing a forum to ask questions. “It’s a good time to check in because you’re finally feeling like you know how to do your job, you’re getting settled,” Steph explains. “It’s a great way for people to feel like they’re being heard while meeting people from other products.”
Now, Steph has moved both roles and countries within the RED team—she recently moved to EF’s Toronto office to be a Recruiting Manager for <a href="https://www.eftours.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">EF Educational Tours</a>, which brings high school students and their teachers on trips abroad.
The chance to move to Toronto came as a bit of surprise to Steph, who hadn’t considered moving to Canada until she was asked about the role. “A lot of people thought I was crazy,” she laughs. “But I knew I loved EF and this was the perfect job.”
And if there’s one thing Steph has learned at EF, it’s to always say “yes” to a new opportunity. “Even if it doesn’t make sense at that point, someone is putting your name out there and thinks you’d be a great fit for a position, or sees something in you that you might not.”
So far, Steph’s new role confirms what she knew from the start: EF is a great fit for her. “I love seeing the people I hire come in and be successful,” she explains. “I can really feel my impact here—the small wins in the office add up to truly make me proud that I made this move.”

Steph is helping diversify EF's talent pool. Our mission is to open the world through education, and Steph is on a mission to bring more of the world to EF.

Seeing people for who they are: Steph’s EF Journey - We are EF

Seeing people for who they are: Steph’s EF Journey ‹ We are EF

Seeing people for who they are: Steph’s EF Journey

Path to great people stephs ef story

Anneli Glamsare knew she had to do something. Many students in her area of Sweden were not learning to read as well as they needed to. As a reading and writing specialist and coach for 22 primary schools in Botkyrka, outside Stockholm, it’s her job to make sure the local reading teachers have the tools and resources they need to teach effectively.
Plus, the schools she supports serve roughly 10,000 students. Anneli knows that the ones who don’t master the fundamentals of reading early are almost certain to struggle in school for years. This hurts their career prospects and negatively impacts the Swedish economy as a whole.
When Anneli began searching for solutions to help her teachers and students, she quickly heard about a new, free assessment tool called <a href="https://legilexi.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">LegiLexi</a>. Swedish reading specialists and researchers were developing it with funding from Bertil Hult, founder of <a href="https://www.ef.com/wwen/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">EF Education First</a>. She contacted LegiLexi to learn more and Botkyrka was invited to be one of the first municipalities to use it widely.
Today, just six years later, all Botkyrka’s students in grades 1 to 3 (roughly ages 6 to 9) complete two to three LegiLexi reading assessments a year.
“Teachers say that they have never had such a clear picture of their students’ reading skills and their development over time,” according to Anneli. “As a result, they are able to better cater to individual needs as well as to needs on a group level.”
Anneli has also noticed that students using LegiLexi are more excited to learn. “Students better understand the journey to become fluent readers and as a result are more motivated to join that journey.”
<h3>Simplicity and science breed success</h3>
<div class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_18011" style="width: 578px"><img alt="" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-18011" class="wp-image-18011 size-full" height="359" sizes="(max-width: 568px) 100vw, 568px" src="https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/LegiLexi-Blog-3.jpg" srcset="https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/LegiLexi-Blog-3.jpg 568w, https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/LegiLexi-Blog-3-300x190.jpg 300w" width="568">Swedish primary school students using the LegiLexi assessment tool.</div>
In just the past 6 months, more than 65,000 Swedish primary school students have completed a LegiLexi assessment. That’s almost 20% of the country’s littlest learners. It has been adopted by teachers in every municipality in the country and even some Swedish schools around the world. In total, more than 20,000 teachers are using LegiLexi tests and tools.
Sofia Norén, President of the LegiLexi Foundation, attributes much of the platform’s success to its simplicity. The design, she says, is very basic. It’s not gamified or elaborate. It’s just easy and effective. That is “enough for kids to love it.”
Also, LegiLexi is an assessment and not a test so there are no wrong answers. They learn what they do well, where they have improved, and what they need to work on next. Each student’s results are positive, personal, and judgement-free.
Martin Ingvar, who initiatiated LegiLexi with Bertil and is a professor at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, one of the world’s leading medical universites, says, “The trick is to do something that children enjoy and what children enjoy most is success and progress.” LegiLexi makes both easy to see.
The science behind LegiLexi is straightforward as well. It is based on a well-established theory called the Simple View of Reading which breaks down the skill of reading into two basic components: word decoding and language comprehension. Translation: students learn to read by learning what letters and words sound and look like, and then understanding what the words mean on their own and as parts of phrases and sentences.
LegiLexi evaluates students’ abilities at every step in this learning process, with an emphasis on the early stages of word decoding because without that foundation, the rest is somewhere between difficult and impossible. The results help teachers know how and where to focus with each learner.
Linda Fälth, a Swedish primary school teacher and associate professor of pedagogy at Linnaeus University Växjö who helped create the platform, emphasizes the many ways it helps teachers teach better.
“Teachers get a carefully tested tool that assesses letter knowledge, phonological ability, word decoding, word comprehension, reading comprehension, and now also spelling,” Linda says, “Then, as a teacher, you also receive teaching recommendations (i.e. suggestions for lesson plans) linked to the class as a whole but also to individual students.” Of course, teachers and administrators also love that the platform is free.
<h3>An Expanding Vision</h3>
<div class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_18087" style="width: 578px"><img alt="" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-18087" class="wp-image-18087 size-full" height="359" sizes="(max-width: 568px) 100vw, 568px" src="https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/MicrosoftTeams-image-5.jpg" srcset="https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/MicrosoftTeams-image-5.jpg 568w, https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/MicrosoftTeams-image-5-300x190.jpg 300w" width="568">EF Education First and LegiLex’s founder, Bertil Hult.</div>
Bertil Hult founded and funded the LegiLexi foundation in 2014. His original goal was to develop a way to help Swedish students with dyslexia learn to read. The cause is personal — Bertil and other members of his family are dyslexic.
Bertil enlisted the help of Martin Ingvar and the two quickly realized that while 4% of Swedes have dyslexia, 20-30% of Swedish students do not properly learn how to read at a young age. Bertil and Martin saw they could have a much bigger impact (and still help dyslexic learners) by developing a tool to support this much larger population.
The issue of reading skills development was increasingly urgent in Sweden at the time. The country’s scores were falling on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which ranks educational achievement in nations around the world. Like many European countries, Sweden was becoming a more diverse, multi-cultural society due to an influx of immigrant students. Simply put, most Swedish teachers lacked experience teaching students who did not speak Swedish as their first language.
The first versions of LegiLexi were delivered to students on paper in 2016. After a year of testing and improving the paper versions, developers in a Shanghai-based research and innovation team within EF launched an iPad version of LegiLexi in 2017.
Today LegiLexi is fully web-based with no special equipment or software required. This makes the highly-accessible platform scalable and able to reach a huge number of students and schools. “Our mission,” President Sofia Norén says, “is that every child should be able to read with fluency and understanding by themselves by the end of the third grade (age 9).”
Martin Ingvar believes the impact of that mission will be enormous. “We can, with more than 90 percent accuracy, predict which students are going to be successful in school by measuring their reading ability in third grade. LegiLexi nudges the whole [Swedish education] system to focus more on reading” and set more students up for long-term success.
As more and more schools and municipalities adopt LegiLexi, it is also creating an incredibly rich pool of data with which to track, compare, and improve how well reading is being taught throughout the country.
The LegiLexi approach is even working its way into the university curriculum for future teachers. For example, Linda Fälth has developed a course for students at Linnaes University called Teaching Children to Read – From Phonological Awareness to Reading Comprehension. It is based on the LegiLexi framework. Over 400 students enrolled this past Fall.
In the years ahead, the LegiLexi team envisions versions of the platform available around the world in multiple languages.
<h3>The Role of EF</h3>
<div class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_18012" style="width: 578px"><img alt="" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-18012" class="wp-image-18012 size-full" height="359" sizes="(max-width: 568px) 100vw, 568px" src="https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/LegiLexi-Blog-4.jpg" srcset="https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/LegiLexi-Blog-4.jpg 568w, https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/LegiLexi-Blog-4-300x190.jpg 300w" width="568"> Group of LegiLexi teachers invited to a full day of training at EF’s Stockholm office.</div>
LegiLexi is very much a part of the EF story. In addition to being funded by Bertil and the Hult family, LegiLexi is supported by many different EF teams. In 2017, an EF team in Shanghai developed the first digital version. Today, EF teams in Europe provide LegiLexi with legal, financial, accounting, and data analysis expertise.
The LegiLexi team – surprisingly, it’s just two people, Sofia and Chief Technology Officer Sara Anvarsson – sits in EF’s office in Stockholm. The Swedish EF employees appreciate what LegiLexi is, what it is trying to accomplish, and what it says about EF’s commitment to making the world a better place.
“Swedish employees are super proud when their kids’ school uses LegiLexi,” Sofia reports, “In the Stockholm office, LegiLexi has gone from nothing to kind of a big thing in just a few years so the EF employees are also proud of giving back” through EF’s LegiLexi connection.
Read more about LegiLexi <a href="https://legilexi.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">here</a>.

LegiLexi evaluates students' abilities at every step in this learning process, with an emphasis on the early stages of word decoding.

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Jj Gilmartin

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