Ketchum woman develops reading app based on her time in Japan

Narda Pitkethly grew up with a brother who struggled with reading, and she was determined to prevent her daughter from wrestling with the same issues. 

"My brother Jay is brilliant, but reading is a critical skill. My family was upper-middle class, and they tried everything to help my brother read better, but nothing worked," Pitkethly said. 

Pitkethly said she started recalling her time after college when she went to Japan to teach English. She had been to Japan as a child when her father was a neurosurgeon in the U.S. Army, and she loved it so much she couldn't wait to go back. 

Narda Pitkethly originally developed the reading program for her daughter. 

Photo via Nardagani.com

"I ended up on the island of Fukuoka, about a thousand miles south of Tokyo, where there were very few foreigners and not many people spoke English, so I had to learn Japanese," Pitkethly said. 

The locals told her in order to learn Japanese, first she had to read it. But to her the Japanese symbols looked like chicken scratch. Pitkethly said a Japanese woman showed her a Hiragana chart, which she used to memorize vowels and the consonants that went with them. 

"Every day I would look at the chart, and within a week I could read the most common Japanese alphabet," Pitkethly said. 

Pitkethly came to Ketchum in the winter of 1988 as a ski bum. She decided to stay, got married and had two children, a son and a daughter. 

When Pitkethy’s daughter started learning to read she saw specialists and teachers who tried to help, but the way they were teaching wasn't working. 

"I started making cards for each letter, when I began to discover 14 of our letters make multiple sounds. I thought back to how I learned Japanese and decided to take that model and implement it to English," Pitkethly said. 

"Think of the letter "C," Pitkethly said. “The main sound is like in the word cat, but it can also make a shh sound like in ocean, or an "S" sound. Say Pacific Ocean. It has all three "C" sounds, so I decided to put symbols underneath the extra sounds to help with sounding out the word. It was wild to look at our language this way."

Pitkethly said she created the system just for her daughter, and once it helped her learn to read she went on with her life as a realtor. She was a single parent, as was her brother, so they decided to join forces and co-parent the cousins together. 

When her brother vanished a week after the 9/11 tragedy in 2001, Pitkethly was heartbroken. 

"There were all these crazy clues about his disappearance,” Pitkethly said. “We brought in search and rescue, psychics, people from all around the valley were helping look for him. I knew he wasn't dead. I could feel it, but something happened for him to just vanish."

Pitkethly said she and her mother came up with a scheme to get his attention. Pitkethly would put out the reading program and would call it "Narda-something" to get his attention. Local news outlets started reporting on the program and Pitkethly hoped it would catch her brother’s attention. 

"I decided to use "gani" as it was a nod to our time in Japan," Pitkethly said. 

Pitkethly has written a book about the experience, and the reason for her brother’s disappearance won’t be revealed in this article so the conclusion won’t be spoiled.

"Nardagani" was written by Narda Pitkethly about the disappearance of her brother in 2001, and how it propelled her reading program. 

Later, Pitkethly’s reading program unexpectedly started to take off. She ended up doing a TedX Talk about her program, and suddenly people from around the world were visiting her website and signing up for her program. 

The web-based program went online and continued until 2022, as Pitkethly learned more about its users and what was working – and what wasn’t. 

"We had thousands of people from 77 countries on our web program. We decided, however, to shift models and started working on an app, where it took people through 11 levels, which are fun and interactive," Pitkethly said. "The app is so much more accessible and gamified."

Pitkethly said she wrote books using her symbols to help people practice their new skill. 

"The books are fun, and almost all of them have a moral to the story and teach people how to live better in the world - from mental health to earth-friendly practices," Pitkethly said. 

Pitkethly earned approval for her program from the Idaho State Education Board in 2012, and had an opportunity to use her pilot program at the school in Buhl. 

"They had 100 students at the time and only 10 of them could read at grade level. In four months, we taught them all to read," she said. 

Pitkethly said a woman from Oregon called about the Nardagani program as she was struggling with her 12-year-old son who couldn't read very well. They had sunk $30,000 into various programs and tutors and he still couldn't read, and he was starting to go down a dangerous road. 

Children who cannot read by fourth grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school. As a result, they are more likely to experience poverty, unemployment, illness and crime, according to a World Literacy Foundation Report from 2012. 

DoSomething.org states 75% of crime is committed by high school dropouts. 

"(The Oregon woman’s) son was making bad choices and once he went through the app - which actually wasn't finished - and he became one of our beta testers, he learned to read. The mom and I cried together," Pitkethly said. 

The Nardagani app allows users to practice reading with their game-like appearance. 

Pitkethly said there are two most common models for reading: phonics based and whole-word based. Nardagani is based on phonics, but a simplified version. 

"In the mid ‘90s, California latched onto the whole-word learning methodology and mandated all public schools use that system. By the late ‘90s, reading scores plummeted," Pitkethly said. 

A school near Pomona, Calif., started using the phonics system last year, and English learners scored nearly three times higher than their peers, according to an article in CalMatters. 

Pitkethly believes programs like Nardagani can help the nation's reading levels improve.

The Nation's Report Card, released in January, shows average 2024 reading scores declined by two points for both fourth- and eighth-grade students compared to 2022. This steepens the three-point decline seen in both grades between 2022 from 2019, according to the National Assessment Governing Board. 

Idaho students are ranked 38th of the 43 states studied in reading recovery after the pandemic, with Blaine County behind more than a grade level, according to an IdahoEdNews.org article. 

Pitkethly said the program is not just for children. She gets positive feedback  from people who have suffered strokes and people suffering from dyslexia or other disabilities such as ADHD or autism. 

One kid Pitkethly talked about in her TedX Talk was Sven, who had autism and couldn't read. After going through Nardagani, he was reading at his age level. 

Sven, who is autistic, learned to read with the Nardagani program. 

"It takes about five weeks to get through the app, and for English language learners about two and a half months," Pitkethly said. "It's like training wheels on a bike, once people learn to read with the symbols we remove them, and they can read."

The beginning two levels of the app are free. After that, users pay $9.99 a month. 

Pitkethly said the program is being adapted to other languages, of which there are currently three, those being English, French and Portuguese. The next one in development is Spanish. 

"It's incredible the number of Spanish speakers who cannot read Spanish,” Pitkethly said. “How wonderful would it be to help them read in their native language?" 

To learn more about Nardagani, visit the website HERE. People can also download the app on Apple and Android platforms under "Read Nardagani."