HILLSBORO, Ore. — South of Eugene, Oregon, the pride of Creswell, Emily Orton Caddis grew up with a passion for music and a love of education. Through her triumphs and devastating setbacks, Emily combined her passions for music and education to create Finnegan the Singing Dragon, a beloved character who revolutionized early childhood education.
Finnegan the singing dragon
Finnegan is at the heart of an adventure-based early childhood curriculum that focuses on early language and literacy development for children ages 2 to 6. The program also includes a book, an interactive game system for kids to sing along with Finnegan, and even a stuffed blue dragon. It was beta tested at Community Action Head Start in Hillsboro, and young students fell in love with Finnegan.
“They really loved Finnegan. I felt like they were really invested in the characters, the curriculum, the activities… everything,” Head Start teacher Michaela Olson said.
In August, Cadiz observed Head Start children interacting with Finnegan and taking notes on how to take the system to the next level.
“I was blown away. I didn’t expect my students to be so excited about our character-driven curriculum,” Cadiz said. “This is a new concept. It’s not a typical way to create a curriculum.”
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A stuffed version of Finnegan the Dragon sits in front of a computer displaying an accompanying learning game.
best achievement
Cadiz is Finnegan’s creator, and while she brought the beloved dragon to life, Finnegan gave her purpose back. And the story of how Finnegan was born is worthy of a fairy tale.
The story begins with music. Cadiz sang with the University Singers and Opera Ensemble at the University of Oregon, and her classically trained voice won her the 1995 Miss Oregon pageant. When she was 19 years old, she charmed her judges at the 1996 Miss America pageant. She performed an aria from the opera “Carmen” in French. She was among the top five finalists, and when the winner was announced, she stood hand in hand with her four other contestants.
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Photo of Emily Cadiz’s performance at the 1996 Miss America Pageant.
“When you’re the last two standing at the end[of the Miss America pageant]holding hands, you think, ‘This is kind of weird,'” Cadiz said.
Cadiz was selected as the first runner-up of Miss America. Her three daughters later came to think of her as royalty.
“I thought she was a princess,” said Emily’s daughter Kelly Kadiz. “Every picture I saw of her had her wearing a crown, so I really thought she was royalty.”
Emily Cadiz used her Miss America scholarship to attend Columbia University and follow in her family of educators to become a special education teacher.
“Education was very important to her. It was a lifelong passion,” said her ex-husband, Patrick Cadiz. “Then all of a sudden this happened. It was like she hit a brick wall. She stopped completely.”
life-changing setbacks
It was then that a crack appeared in Cadiz’s crown. In 2015, students attacked Cadiz in his classroom. She suffered severe brain damage and lost much of her ability to speak. She couldn’t come up with a simple word name for her.
She doesn’t like to talk about what happened, but the injuries were severe.
“If I tried to name a thing with four prongs that you use to eat a salad, someone would say, ‘Do you mean a fork?’ Someone would ask me for ID, and someone would ask me for my wallet. I remember looking inside and not knowing what my ID was,” she said.
Her depression made her unable to work and often unable to get out of bed.
“You don’t want to admit how bad it was. It was so bad,” Cadiz said. “I ended up losing my house.”
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Emily Cadiz recalls the pain she endured after sustaining a brain injury in 2015.
music heals
It wasn’t until a few months later that Cadiz regained his passion for music and began to recover. Cadiz sang at the piano and played “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” as he talked about how his music affected his damaged brain.
“…I felt my brain sweating. It hurt in a good way. I felt it growing in a good way,” she said.
In 2017, she applied to Portland State University’s graduate music program and discovered that music truly healed her brain.
Dr. Bonnie Mikush, director of the PSU School of Music and Theater, mentored Cadiz as she completed her master’s degree at PSU.
“When Emily first came to us, she identified herself as a victim of the trauma she experienced in the classroom. She was still carrying the burden of that trauma,” Mikush said. Ta.
The connection between music, language, and the brain
While working toward her master’s degree, Cadiz said she discovered the science of music and its connection to language.
“They gave me a safe place to heal,” she said. “I was able to overcome this injury and become a functioning member of society again.”
Finnegan the Singing Dragon was born as a master’s thesis project that combined her love of music with her passion for teaching.
“She’s an entrepreneur and she’s making an impact. I’ve seen that be amazing and beautiful,” Mikush said.
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Emily Cadiz is sitting at her piano at home.
From master’s project to starting a business
During the pandemic, Cadiz took Finnegan from his master’s thesis project to the startup company. She assembled a team to help launch the project, and in 2023 Portland She was selected as a finalist for the Incubator Her Experiment.
At a Portland Incubator event in September, Cadiz told visitors interested in the education system that early education needs more attention. Cadiz believes that teachers are not being given the most effective tools to help young children learn to read.
“We are one of the only countries that does not provide free pre-school education for all and does not report on its standards,” she said. “We (Finnegan Learning System) are the first character-based preschool curriculum with an emphasis on language development.”
Dr. Mark Seidenberg is a cognitive scientist and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The way children are taught to read in school is disconnected from the latest research on how language and speech actually develop in children’s brains,” he told NPR. Told.
Emily Caddis hopes Finnegan can bridge this gap by using phonetics and interactive music to help early learners learn to read. Dr. Seidenberg believes that children need to learn the correspondence between the letters on the page and the sounds in the words. Finnegan does just that while taking them on a fascinating adventure that sparks young imaginations.
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Screenshot of the interactive Finnegan the Dragon learning game.
Find Finnegan’s Fire
“Finnegan is a little dragon who doesn’t have fire, so he uses songs instead. He leads the kids on an adventure to find their own fire, and that’s the story,” Cadiz said.
Cadiz explained that the Finnegan Learning System is designed to be interactive to combat the three to four hours the average preschooler spends on passive screen time, which has worsened during the pandemic. .
Back at Community Action Head Start in Hillsboro, the 2- and 3-year-olds clutched stuffed blue dragons as they sang along with Finnegan and watched themselves on split-screen iPads.
“That little spider crawled up the spout,” they sang.
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Children at Community Action Head Start in Hillsboro learn with Finnegan.
Josh Terrill, area supervisor for Community Action Head Start in Hillsboro, said, “They’re really into Finnegan…This is a high-level program that engages kids like nothing I’ve ever seen. I think it’s a tool that was developed in the past.”
The Finnegan Learning System tested so successfully at Head Start in Hillsboro that it was expanded to 20 other sites this fall. Cadiz has applied for grants and hopes to introduce Finnegan in other markets in January 2024.
Finnegan and Emily Caddis are both finding their groove.
“This was an opportunity for her to reinvent herself, and I think Finnegan the Dragon really helped her at times,” Patrick Caddis said.
Emily’s daughters agreed.
“It was so beautiful to see Finnegan’s life come back to life,” Casey Caddis said.
“That’s what Finnegan did. He reset my purpose in life and gave me a good hustle. I’m hustling,” Emily Caddis said.
Finnegan’s fairy tales have no end. Writing continues as Finnegan’s quest to find the fire begins a new chapter for Emily and, she hopes, for preschoolers in classrooms across the country.
Click here to learn more about Finnegan the Dragon.
Credit: KGW
