Larry Swartz

Larry Swartz is a Canadian educator, author, and university instructor specializing in literacy and dramatic arts. He has worked in education for over four decades as a classroom teacher, consultant, and instructor, including long-term roles in literacy and drama education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. Swartz holds multiple education credentials from the University of Toronto and York University, including a Doctor of Education in Curriculum from OISE, as well as specialist qualifications in reading, dramatic arts, and visual arts.

Swartz is the author of several teacher resource books that focus on using children’s literature and the arts to support reading, writing, and caring classroom communities, such as Dramathemes, Creating Caring Classrooms (with Kathleen Gould Lundy), and “This Is a Great Book!” (with Shelley Stagg Peterson). His book Word by Word: 101 Ways to Inspire and Engage Students by Building Vocabulary, Improving Spelling, and Enriching Reading, Writing, and Learning is a practical resource for K–10 educators that offers classroom strategies to make words the core of instruction, helping students build vocabulary, strengthen spelling, and deepen their understanding of language across subject areas.