Message from our Executive Director

Welcome.  We are so glad you are here.

Since starting as Executive Director of the Atlanta Speech School in 1998, every day, I get to go to work with colleagues providing transformational experiences for children. And I get to join children as they discover who they are on their way to becoming who they are meant to be.

It is the greatest job in the world.

Our mission, to help each person develop their full potential through language and literacy, has been a part of the School since its inception more than 85 years ago, with our founder Katherine Hamm's vision of a school where children could learn to speak and read, regardless of their family's financial means. As we have evolved over the years, we have never lost sight of that vision of equity.

Every child deserves the same opportunity of each child at this School: to decide their own future. Through our Rollins Center for Language & Literacy and its Cox Campus, we strive to make that possible. Recognizing that learning is on a continuum, on campus and through Cox Campus we work with children from birth through elementary school with that singular purpose.

At the Speech School, the foundation for this promise and path is grounded in our work in every moment to “construct each child’s deep reading brain.” Beyond proficiency, the Deep Reading Brain requires of us that we engage with the world around us - think critically and act empathetically.

Children are taught to listen, and are never silenced. In conversations and questions, in classrooms and playgrounds, over meals and through carpool lines, each child is seen, heard, met, reached, and taught by every adult, with intentionality, imagination and joy. As we finish each school year, we have the incredible privilege of witnessing children who are closer to their future selves – and, through their experiences, becoming the people who will one day change our world.

I invite you to join me on our campus so we can share what it is that makes this such an amazing place.  

Sincerely,

Comer Yates