Alumna Dinah Zike makes her mark in education
Speaker, trainer reaches 70,000 teachers yearly

Zike's graphic organizers are helping educators across the nation.

Take a look inside virtually any grade school textbook that McGraw-Hill publishes and you’ll find a Foldables™ activity. Designed by Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi alumna Dinah Zike, Foldables™ are innovative, three dimensional graphic organizers that have become an international sensation among educators.

“I began designing them when I was 15 years old,” recalled Zike. “Foldables™ take very complicated data or information and transform it into something visual, graphic and kinesthetic.”

Zike began tutoring while in high school and soon found herself trying to find ways to teach students to learn something fast, “Because we didn’t have a lot of extra time to work with,” she said. Eventually, she began to use Foldables™ as a study aid for herself throughout high school and college.

Upon graduation from then Corpus Christi State University in the 1970s, Zike left the city for a teaching position in Anderson, Texas. “I worked with several different grade levels, first grade all the way to sixth, teaching remedial math. I also trained in Louisville, learning how to teach dyslexic middle and high school students,” she noted. Meanwhile, she continued to use her Foldables™ in her daily lessons with special needs children.

In 1984 she formed her own educational publishing and consulting company, Dinah-Might Adventures. “By 2000, I had built it up to become a fairly good-sized company and found myself as a keynote speaker alongside John Glenn at the National Science Teachers Conference,” Zike said. “Representatives from McGraw-Hill saw me at the conference and approached me.

It was extremely gratifying to hear them say, ‘We understand what you do and would like to include your teaching process in our textbooks.’”

Over Zike’s 31-year teaching career she has created more than 150 educational supplemental materials. Her travel schedule is demanding, with speaking engagements and training sessions 180 days out of the year. One recent week saw her zigzag across the country for a handful of speaking engagements from Newport News, to Oregon to San Diego – all in the span of just five days. Educators seek Zike out for workshops and training seminars from as far away as China, Japan and Africa.
“I estimate reaching in excess of 70,000 teachers a year,” she commented. “Teachers get so excited about what I am sharing with them. I can’t help but feel exhilarated.”

Zike is now based out of Comfort, Texas, just northwest of San Antonio, where she and her husband, award-winning architect Ignacio Salas-Humara, are renovating an 1886 German home. “It has been a major project, but we love it,” she said. “We also have four longhorn cattle, a bull and three cows.”

Always keeping busy and a true entrepreneur at heart, Zike is currently gearing up for the summer 2006 opening of the Dinah Zike Institute and its Trainer of Trainers program. “Educators from around the world will come and learn how to teach my methods of using Foldables™ to their fellow teachers so these study aids can be used in their local schools,” she said.