Dynamic Duo

At This Illinois High School, Two Brothers Are Leading The Charge for Literacy Skills.

Mundelein, Ill.

When Dennis and Dan Szymkowiak get together for family gatherings, school talk runs as heavy as the brown gravy. As teachers at the same high school in this middle-class suburb north of Chicago—Dennis in English, and Dan in mathematics—there’s always catching up to do on administrative issues, school events, and students the brothers have in common.

But when their two sisters, who are elementary school teachers, and Dan’s wife, a middle school science teacher, join in the conversation, the focus invariably turns to instruction, and the challenges of helping students understand their respective subjects.

As a veteran English teacher at Mundelein High School, Dennis Szymkowiak has long taught students strategies for tackling increasingly difficult literary texts and writing assignments in his classes. But it was in those family discussions that he began to fully grasp the difficulties students were facing in other subjects because...