Unique Experiences

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Bid on the opportunity to have your child assessed by Rayna Dineen, who founded Santa Fe School for the Arts & Sciences and Santa Fe nonprofit Reading Quest. This assessment will be conducted online with your child and will include four different assessments focused on different aspects of reading. After the meeting, Rayna will meet with you and make recommendations for your child to continue a joyful and lifelong love of reading.

Rayna and her husband Brian Dineen along with a group of committed parents, founded Santa Fe School for the Arts & Sciences in 2000. Rayna served as Principal, Middle School Director and Drama Teacher for the school's first 13 years. In 2012, she started Hooked on Books and Reading is Magic during a Middle School Social Justice Expedition. The literacy-focused expedition has since grown into Reading Quest, a Santa Fe nonprofit with the mission of providing joyful, quality reading tutoring for striving readers and professional development for teachers. Reading Quest empowers children to believe in themselves and support them to become strong, enthusiastic readers. Arts & Sciences continues to host the Reading is Magic camp on the Arts & Sciences campus during which Reading Quest serves approximately 60 students in free intensive summer camps for students in the Santa Fe Public Schools.  

About Rayna Dineen (from Reading Quest website)
Rayna has worked in education for 40 years. She received two master's degrees from Teachers College, Columbia University, in addition to doctoral work at Colorado State University. Rayna has taught students from preschool to grade 12 and is passionate about literacy, joyful project based learning, inclusive practices, positive classroom management and service learning.

She co-directed the Cariño Community Children's program for Santa Fe Public Schools and taught children with special needs at New Vistas. In 2000, she founded an EL Education prek-8 school in Santa Fe, NM (Santa Fe School for the Arts & Sciences) where she served as teacher and principal for 13 years.

Rayna has also worked as an EL Education School Consultant serving Santa Fe Public Schools and schools in Australia, India, New Mexico, Arizona, West Virginia, Utah, Idaho and Colorado. She facilitates national education institutes and works with experiential education organizations both here and overseas. She also consulted for Discover Learning, a Gates Foundation collaboration between Save the Children and UC Berkeley which supports a project based learning program for children ages 10-11 in Tanzania. She has consulted for Harlem Village Academies and two schools in India, Polymath School and Heritage Xperiential Learning School. She founded Hooked on Books and Reading is Magic in 2012 and began Reading Quest in 2015. She believes in the power of young people to change our world and loves supporting children as they discover the joy of reading.