By Gia Myers • Posted January 28, 2025

Erica Braunlinger, a 24-year-old fourth grade teacher at St. Mary Magdalen School in Media, has been honored as a recipient of the International Literacy Association’s (ILA) “30 Under 30” award for 2025.

This semi-annual award recognizes and celebrates young professionals around the world who are making a significant impact in the field of literacy and education.

“I had great teachers growing up,” Braunlinger said, looking back upon her childhood.

Growing up in Glen Mills, Delaware County, with her parents and two older brothers Braunlinger attended her parish school at St. Thomas the Apostle  Parish.

She fondly remembers falling in love with learning and reading with her first-grade teacher, Marti Purifico, who read books from the Junie B. Jones series, while students sat on the classroom rug and listened.

Braunlinger says she also finds inspiration from her fourth-grade teacher, Sister Elizabeth DeWaele, O.S.F., “since that’s the grade I teach now.”

It was during her teenage years as a student at Cardinal O’Hara High School in Springfield that Braunlinger felt called to work with children.

She had considered being a school counsellor or psychologist, but it was while working at the Rocky Run YMCA summer camp program at age 16 that she realized, “I have to be a teacher,” she said.

Despite her lifelong love of reading, Braunlinger admits she often struggled with reading comprehension as a student, which inspired her to focus on helping students with reading challenges.

She also realized how reading touches every part of a student’s education, not only English and Language Arts (ELA) classes.

“You read in every subject,” she said. “In math, you have to read the word problems. You have to read an article for social studies. You have to read a prayer for religion. All of it is reading.”

After graduating from O’Hara in 2018, Braunlinger enrolled at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, earning a bachelor’s degree in elementary and special education in 2022, followed by a master’s degree in special education with a concentration in reading intervention in 2023.

While a master’s degree candidate, Braunlinger first became involved with ILA, which granted her the “30 Under 30” honor. She served as president of ILA’s Alpha Upsilon Alpha honor society at St. Joe’s (2022-2023).

During this time, she also organized a literacy event at a Montgomery County library, where children read books to therapy dogs from Angels on a Leash, a volunteer organization of visiting therapy dogs and their owners. She witnessed firsthand children growing in confidence while reading to their canine friends.

Now teaching fourth grade at St. Mary Magdalen School, Braunlinger addresses phonemic awareness deficits – difficulty identifying individual sounds in speech — heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic. Her students were just starting in school when the pandemic hit.

“In those younger grades, you get the foundations of how to form your mouth with the letters,” she said. “With masks, that was so impossible to do because you can’t see mouths or (the sound is) muffled.”

Braunlinger addresses these issues using skills she learned in college through her certification in the Wilson Reading System, a multisensory program that helps students learn to read and write.

She is also a member of the Phanatic About Reading Program, and her school will be receiving a visit from the well-loved mascot, the Phillie Phanatic, in February to celebrate students’ successes in the program.

Outside the classroom, Braunlinger serves on the ELA Curriculum Team for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, and she’s a member of the National Council of Teachers in English, where she writes and reviews book rationales based on how they can be implemented into curricula..

Braunlinger said she “feels so honored” to receive the “30 Under 30” recognition at such an early stage of her career, especially since she was selected from among hundreds of applicants around the world.

She is glad that what she’s done so far in her career has been considered “impactful,” and said the award gives her “the motivation to keep going and keep working.”

It’s also confirmation “that I’m on the right path with what I’m doing,” she said.