Taylar B. Wenzel

Taylar B. Wenzel, EdD, is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Teacher Education at the University of Central Florida, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in elementary education. She is the founder and co-director of the UCF Reading Clinic and director of the UCF Downtown Saturday Reading Camp, which provide literacy acceleration opportunities for K–6 students and clinical field experiences for teacher candidates. Wenzel serves as faculty lead for several community-partnership, use-inspired research projects, including the Read2Succeed Partnership, the Knights Read Community Bus, and the City Year Teaching Fellowship, and her work has been recognized with the University Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award and multiple Teaching Incentive Program Awards.

Wenzel holds an EdD in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Central Florida and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in elementary education from the University of Florida. She is the lead author of Small Groups for Big Readers: Ten Questions Answered About Core Reading Instruction in the K–5 Classroom and a co-author of Making Sense of Mathematics for Teaching Girls in Grades K–5. Her research interests include developing teacher candidates’ pedagogical content knowledge through job-embedded professional learning, examining residency models in teacher preparation, and building the collective efficacy of elementary reading educators.