HILLSBORO, Ore. — Emily Orton Cadiz, the pride of Creswell, Ore., south of Eugene, grew up with a passion for music and a love for education. Through crowning achievements and devastating setbacks, Emily created a lovable character, Finnegan the Singing Dragon, that marries her passions for music and education to help revolutionize early childhood education.
Finnegan the Singing Dragon
Finnegan is the center of an adventure-based preschool curriculum focused on early language and literacy development for children ages 2 to 6. The program includes a book, an interactive gaming system where children sing along with Finnegan, even a plush stuffed blue dragon. It was beta tested at Community Action Head Start in Hillsboro where the young students fell in love with Finnegan.
"They love Finnegan so much — the character, the curriculum, the activities ... everything about it felt like they were really invested in it," said Head Start teacher Mykaela Olson.
In August, Cadiz observed the Head Start children interacting with Finnegan, taking notes about ways she could take the system to the next level.
"It was overwhelming. I didn't anticipate them being so excited about the character-driven curriculum," Cadiz said. "It's a new concept. It's not a typical way to write curriculum."
Crowning Achievements
Cadiz is Finnegan's creator, and while she brought the lovable dragon to life, Finnegan brought purpose back to hers — and the story of how Finnegan was born is worthy of a fairytale.
The story starts with music. Cadiz sang with the University Singers and the Opera Ensemble at the University of Oregon, and with her classically trained voice she went on to win the Miss Oregon pageant in 1995. At the age of 19, she dazzled the judges in the 1996 Miss America pageant with her rendition in French of an aria from the opera Carmen. She made it into the top five finalists and stood hand in hand with the other four contestants as the winner was announced.
"When you're the last two standing there at the end (of the Miss America pageant) holding hands, you're thinking, 'This is kind of weird,'" Cadiz said.
Cadiz was named Miss America first runner-up. Her three daughters would later think she was royalty.
"I thought she was a princess. I genuinely thought that woman was royalty, because (in) all the pictures I saw of her she was wearing a crown," said Emily's daughter, Kelly Cadiz.
Emily Cadiz used her Miss America scholarship money to attend Columbia University and would follow her family of educators to become a special education teacher.
"Education was so important to her. It was a life-long passion," said ex-husband Patrick Cadiz. "Then, all of a sudden this happened. It was like hitting a brick wall. She came to a complete stop."
Life-changing setback
That's when Cadiz's crown cracked. In 2015, a student attacked Cadiz in the classroom. She suffered a severe brain injury and lost much of her ability to speak. She couldn't think of the names for simple words.
She doesn't like to talk about what happened, but the injury was devastating.
"I'd try to name the thing with four prongs you use to eat a salad, and someone would say, 'You mean a fork?' I remember someone asked me for my ID and I was looking in my wallet and I couldn't figure out what my ID was," she said.
She was depressed, couldn't work, and often couldn't get out of bed.
"You don't want to admit how bad it is. It was very bad," said Cadiz. "I ended up losing my house."
Music heals
It wasn't until months later that Cadiz reconnected with her passion for music, and she started to heal. Singing at her piano as she played "Somewhere over the Rainbow," Cadiz described how music affected her injured brain.
" ... I could feel my brain sweat. It hurt in a good way. I could feel it growing in a good way," she said.
In 2017, she applied to Portland State University's graduate music program — and discovered music really was healing her brain.
Dr. Bonnie Miksch, director of the PSU School of Music and Theater, mentored Cadiz as she completed PSU's master’s program.
"When Emily first came to us she identified as a victim of trauma she experienced in the classroom. She was still carrying the burden of that trauma," said Miksch.
The connection between music, language, and the brain
As she worked to complete her master’s degree, Cadiz said she discovered the science of music and its connection to language.
"They gave me a safe space to heal," she said. "I was able to get through this injury to the place where I could be a functional part of society again."
Finnegan the Singing Dragon was born as her master's thesis project — combining her love of music with her passion for teaching.
"She's an entrepreneur and she's making an impact. It has been a wonderful, beautiful thing to witness," Miksch said.
From master's project to start-up business
During the pandemic, Cadiz would take Finnegan from a master’s thesis project to a start-up business. She gathered a team to help launch the project and was named a finalist at the 2023 Portland Incubator Experiment.
At the September Portland Incubator event, Cadiz told visitors interested in her educational system that more attention needs to be focused on early education. Cadiz believes teachers aren't given the most effective tools to help young children get ready to read.
"We are one of the only nations that doesn't have free preschool for everyone and doesn't report on those standards," she said. "We (the Finnegan learning system) are the first preschool curriculum that is character-driven and we focus on language development."
Dr. Mark Seidenberg is a cognitive scientist and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He told NPR, “The way kids are taught to read in school is disconnected from the latest research, namely how language and speech actually develop in a child's brain."
That's a gap Emily Cadiz hopes Finnegan can bridge by helping early learners become reading-ready through the use of phonetics and interactive music. Dr. Seidenberg believes kids need to learn the correspondence between the letters on the page and the sounds of words. Finnegan does that while also taking them on a compelling adventure that stimulates young imaginations.
Finding Finnegan's fire
"Finnegan is the little dragon that doesn't have fire, so he uses song in place of that. He guides the kids through adventure to search for his fire. That's the story," Cadiz said.
Cadiz explained that the Finnegan learning system is designed to be interactive to counter the 3-4 hours the average preschooler spends in passive screen time that was exacerbated during the pandemic.
Back at Community Action Head Start in Hillsboro, the 2- and 3-year-olds clutched their blue dragon stuffies while they sang along with Finnegan, watching themselves on a split-screen on an iPad.
"The itsy bitsy spider crawled up the water spout," they sang.
"They've really latched on to Finnegan ... I think it's a highly developed tool that engages children like nothing I've seen," said Josh Terrill, area supervisor for Community Action Head Start in Hillsboro.
The Finnegan learning system tested so well at the Head Start in Hillsboro, it was expanded to 20 other sites this fall. Cadiz has been applying for grants and hopes to introduce Finnegan in other markets in January of 2024.
Both Finnegan and Emily Cadiz are finding their fire.
"It was an opportunity for her to reinvent herself, and Finnegan the dragon I like to think sometimes really helped save her," said Patrick Cadiz.
Emily's daughters agreed.
"Seeing Finnegan bring that spark back into her life has really been beautiful," said Kacey Cadiz.
"That's what Finnegan has done. Re-purposed my life and given me a good hustle. I'm hustling," Emily Cadiz said.
The Finnegan fairytale has no ending. It's still being written, as Finnegan's quest to find his fire lights a new chapter for Emily — and, she hopes, for preschoolers in classrooms across the country.
More information on Finnegan the Dragon can be found here.
