Kira Cotter

Kira has been the Reading Specialist at CDS since 2016, where she provides targeted intervention for kindergarten through fourth grade students, partners with teachers to strengthen instruction and build curriculum, facilitates literacy coaching, and leads ongoing professional development. Grounded in the Science of Reading, her work combines systematic, evidence-based instruction with a focus on sparking joy and fostering a lifelong love of reading.
She is formally trained in the Orton-Gillingham approach and holds an M.Ed. in Reading Education from the University of Virginia, along with a K–12 Reading Specialist endorsement. Before joining CDS, Kira worked as a literacy mentor to pre-service teachers through UVA and provided direct reading intervention in Charlottesville schools. She taught first grade for several years at a progressive independent school in Alexandria, VA, after completing a two-year teacher training program at Beauvoir, the National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C. Her love of teaching began after earning her B.A. from the University of Arizona and spending a summer teaching in a village in Tanzania.