On the Rig

Carl Sommer is eminently qualified to teach children the principles necessary for success in an increasingly complex world. An ardent educator with a passion for communicating principled values and practical learning skills, Sommer identified early in his career many of the obstacles inhibiting the success of children as adults, and he made it his mission to formulate practical solutions.

In 1984, Sommer penned the book, Schools in Crisis: Training for Success or Failure?, incorporating ten years of research that included his time as a New York City high school teacher, plus hundreds of interviews with parents, students, teachers, assistant principals, and principals. Providentially, he began his specialized machining business in 1986 and built it into the largest company of its kind in North America. That business afforded him the opportunity to evaluate the success of working adults based on their values and skill sets, which took him full circle and supported his research and identification of the need for childhood educational materials that teach principled values and practical learning skills.

With proven business success, Sommer follows his passion to impart life skills for success and ethical values to children. Author of over 200 books, including forty-two award-winning Sommer-Time Stories, read-alongs, and videos, his educational materials have won eighty-five national awards—Teachers' Choice Award, Mom's Choice Award, Children's Choice Award, Family Choice Award, and Parents' Choice Award. Translated into numerous foreign languages and his videos, where he shares practical life skills to children, have for ten years been shown around the world.

Sommer developed Phonics Adventure, a K-3 motivational, phonics, literature-based reading program for K-3. Dr. Christa Grant, who holds a PhD in teaching and learning and a Masters of Education with a Specialization in Curriculum and Instruction, assisted in writing the curriculum along with other educators. Phonics Adventure combines systematic and explicit phonics education through interesting and motivating, authentic, leveled readers that children enjoy. To date, here are 8 textbooks, over 200 readers—fiction and nonfiction—21 alphabet songs, apps, and games, and over 5,000 images and sentences utilizing the words taught, and much more in development.

Phonics Adventure will be incorporated into Sommer Learning, a free web-based program. It includes a wide variety of state-of-the-art materials, which educate and motivate students to develop constructive life skills for success. Sommer Learning programs also include Math K-3 elementary; Number Success with 550 videos that utilize “real-world” math from addition to trigonometry; Reading Success: youth-adult; Writing Success: elementary; and Typing Success: all ages.

Sommer has been happily married since 1955 and has five children and twenty grandchildren. An avid reader, his hobbies include swimming and fishing. He exercises five times a week and has no plans to retire. He continues to pursue his love of education and the success of children, writing and developing educational materials. Sommer’s passion and purpose is to provide exciting and inspiring, character-building resources that motivate and train children how to incorporate positive virtues and valuable life skills enabling them to live successful lives that result in stronger families, better schools, and a safer, and more productive society.