The Alpha-Phonics Story
Teach a Child to Read
The Paradigm Company, publishers of Alpha-Phonics, was originally founded by literacy advocates, Peter (MBA from the University of California Berkeley) and June Watt (an elementary school teacher). The Watts were driven by a shared desire to make reading instruction more accessible. They were inspired by the work of Sam Blumenfeld, an educator and author who created the Alpha-Phonics program. Blumenfeld’s vision was simple yet powerful: a phonics-based reading method that could be used by anyone, anywhere, to teach reading effectively. Recognizing the impact of this approach, the Watts dedicated themselves to bringing Alpha-Phonics to a broader audience, ensuring that it would be a resource for parents, teachers, and homeschoolers alike.
At its core, the mission of the Paradigm Company is to empower people with the tools they need to teach reading successfully. The company is committed to preserving the straightforward, effective methods developed by Blumenfeld, while continually supporting the needs of modern educators. By offering materials that are easy to use, affordable, and adaptable, Alpha-Phonics remains dedicated to helping learners of all ages build strong, confident reading skills. The legacy of Peter and June Watt, alongside Sam Blumenfeld’s foundational work, lives on in every book and lesson, guiding new generations toward literacy and lifelong learning.
Rooted in Family
Peter & June Watt
The Paradigm Company was founded by Peter & June Watt in January 1984, in Boise, Idaho, to publish books for Samuel Blumenfeld including Alpha-Phonics and How To Tutor. They have continued to offer what they feel are the best possible materials to educate young children, especially in the so-called “3-Rs,” reading, handwriting and arithmetic.
During that 30-year span they have constantly added experience in helping families, especially homeschooling families, to successfully educate their children. To hold to a Christian perspective has always been their goal.
The Watt Family 2006
Our Team
David Ryan
Owner & Operator
From The Shy Stegosaurus and Swiss Family Robinson to masterworks by Somerset Maugham, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Marcus Aurelius, and Robert Heinlein, books have been a binding for David Ryan’s life. Taught with phonics, David was a strong reader from the start, beaming from his California bedroom to ancient cities, other worlds and the boundaries of his own imagination.
As a career photographer over the past 55 years with such clients as Newsweek, National Geographic, Western Airlines, Viking Cruises, and so many others, David has told his own artful stories about people and places dotting the planet. He spent a decade living and working in Mexico, for the president’s office to his own professional photo lab and a Catholic girls’ school. He made homes in San Francisco and then Boise, serving on the Pacific Asia Travel Association board and the Idaho Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired.
As an entrepreneur, David launched and ran a successful T-shirt business focused on stamp art and a loose-leaf tea company with mail-order, wholesale and retail arms. He is the founder and chief nerd behind Greetings from Other Worlds, which offers unique greeting cards featuring a trove of vintage art lovingly spelunked from the public domain.
In all things, David credits reading with his ability to learn, engage and express something essential about the human condition. His work with Alpha-Phonics spans a dozen years and every hat you can imagine, from marketing and web support to his current role expanding the legacy passed to him personally by Peter Watt.
“It’s a matter of imagination,” David says. “Reading stimulates the imagination that leads to involvement in the arts and sciences—to development of curiosity, understanding, empathy, passion. I really believe that any person who doesn’t learn to read well is handicapped for life.”
Meg Rayborn Dawson
Publisher’s Assistant
Meg is the mother of nine grown children. As a homeschooling parent, she encouraged her children to read and oftentimes depended on biographies and historical fiction novels to fill in the gaps in her curriculum – and to give her children a broader sense of the outside world.
After teaching most of her children, and two of her grandchildren to read, using Alpha-Phonics, she began tutoring other people’s children who were not yet successful at learning to read. In 2023 she spent three months at a Christian boarding school in Kentucky where she taught reading to children in their elementary school, bringing most of these children up to grade level in their reading skills.
Meg considers herself a lifelong learner and sees her education as a way to better equip herself to serve others. Her education includes an MA in Exceptional Student Education with an emphasis on Applied Behavior Analysis (Univ. of W. Florida); an MS in Psychology (Grand Canyon University), and a BA from Northwest Nazarene University.
She is passionate about encouraging children and adults in their efforts to learn how to read, and hopes to continue finding new and better ways to fulfill this dream.