LITTLE RIVER-ACADEMY, Texas — Jennifer Zavodny, who teaches at Academy Early Childhood Center , created "Piper the Pumpkin" as an interactive tool to help her students develop critical reading skills while meeting state teaching standards.

"My main inspiration was for my T-TESS," Zavodny said, referring to the Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System, which the state uses to assess whether educators meet teaching standards.

Rather than searching for existing materials, Zavodny decided to create her own resource tailored to evaluation requirements.

"Instead of finding one, I decided I would just try to make my own that way I knew it checked all the boxes," she said.

The book made its debut in Zavodny's classroom, where she read it aloud to kindergarteners for the first time. The st

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