Ken began his public school career with the 1955-56 school year by teaching English and geography to 8th-graders at North Point Junior High in Dundalk, Maryland. He noted the difficulty that his students had with reading.

During the following two school years, 1956-58, Ken taught at the Annex to North Point Junior High, located in the former Sparrows Point High School in Edgemere, Maryland. He began to see the way that a negative self-image impacted students’ ability to learn, and began to review motivational materials that could address that.

At the time, Johns Hopkins, Towson State, and the University of Maryland offered Master’s programs in education that only provided two routes for public school teachers to advance in their careers: administration or counseling. Ken was interested in neither. Yet a third possibility was offered under the training of Gil Schiffman at Loyola College (now Loyola University) in Baltimore: teaching students how to read. Thus, Ken entered Loyola’s Master’s of Education program in 1956 with an emphasis on Secondary Reading Study.

In 1958, Ken was among the teaching staff to open the new Middle River Junior High. Ken approached his mentor, Gil Schiffman, to ask for guidance in teaching phonetics at Middle River. Schiffman directed Ken to another student in Loyola’s Master’s in Education program, Warren Edgar, who was teaching at an elementary school and provided Ken with support.

During his summer breaks from Middle River Junior High, Ken taught pre-college sessions at the University of Maryland that had been funded by the GI Bill of 1944. Previously, any graduate of a Maryland high school was eligible to matriculate to the University of Maryland. Due to the high drop-out rate of new students, pre-college summer sessions were instituted for students with less than a C average. Dr. Martha Maxwell oversaw the part of the pre-college program that taught students skills they needed to succeed in college. Under her mentorship, Ken changed his view of his work from being a reading teacher to being a learning skills counselor.

It was also at Middle River Junior High that Ken met a fellow teacher named Jean Casale. He was to marry her (twice!) in 1960.

In 1961, Ken received his Master’s in Education from Loyola College. The following year, he was again among the teaching staff to open a new school – this time it was Deep Creek Junior High in Essex. There, Ken clashed with his supervisor over how to teach reading. At the time, one of Ken’s colleagues from the University of Maryland pre-college summer sessions, Paul E. Nagy, wanted to resign from his position teaching speed reading in the English Department at Essex Community College. Nagy was interesting in retiring to raise trees in West Virginia. At Nagy’s suggestion, Ken replaced him.