Joanne Knapp-Philo Obituary (1947 - 2025)

Born Aug 12, 1947, Joanne Knapp-Philo attended Wicomico High School in Salisbury, MD. View the obituary, post a memory, or share a photo about Joanne Knapp-philo.

Graduation Year	Class of 1965
Date of Birth	Aug 12, 1947
Date of Passing	Oct 24, 2025
About	Joanne was born August 12, 1947 in Charleston, WV to Denver and Theresa Knapp, the first of their 4 children. At the age of 7 her family moved to Salisbury MD, where her father was a high school teacher and football coach. She attended Catholic school through middle school, and then public high school. After graduating from Wicomico HIgh School in Salisbury in 1965, she attended Mt. St. Agnes College in Baltimore. She met her future husband, John Philo, in 1968, while they were both seniors in college in Baltimore. After graduating with a B.A. in Elementary Education in May 1969, Joanne moved to California to become a Special Ed teacher in Hughson, a small town in the Central Valley, while John started grad school at Stanford. They were married in Salisbury, MD in June 1970. She then entered graduate studies at San Francisco State University, earning an M.A. in Special Ed in 1972, and in 1974 did additional post-graduate studies in England on a Rotary Club Fellowship. Her son Evan was born in Palo Alto in 1977, and the next year they relocated to Connecticut for John to take up a postdoctoral position at UConn. In 1991 they relocated to Thousand Oaks, CA when John left academia to work for Amgen. In 2001 (at age 54) Joanne completed her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology-Birth to Three from the University of Connecticut, and then in 2012 she & John moved to San Diego. Joanne loved reading, cooking, gardening, traveling, and gathering with friends and family. Her home was filled with more than 1,700 books (including ~270 cook books), as well as artworks, baskets, and other crafts collected during her travels. In her last year she became the steward for a Little Free Library, a role that she dearly loved. Her favorite vacation spot was Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, which she visited at least 10 times. Her overseas travels included China, Thailand, Cambodia, India, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the British Islands, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, Spain, France, Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, Kenya & Tanzania. Joanne was predeceased by her parents and her brother Jerry. She is survived by her husband of 55 years John Philo, her sister Yvonne Barhight and brother Tim Knapp, her son Evan Philo and his wife Lisa Philo, and grandsons Linden & Tannen Philo. PROFESSIONAL LIFE Joanne had a long and distinguished career in education and education research. She began as a classroom teacher in Special Ed at the Elementary level, where she pioneered integrating/mainstreaming Special Ed with regular ed students. Then in Fremont, CA she developed and implemented a program for students with autism and severe emotional disturbance. After relocating to Connecticut she became a principal for special education students (pre-K to 12), and for adults in institutional settings. Later Joanne switched to working with infants and families as a supervisor in the Connecticut Early Intervention (Birth to Three) program. After moving back to California in 1991, Joanne began working as a principal for the Ventura County Superintendent of Schools Office. In that position she managed programs for preschool children with disabilities, and was co-Principal of a K-12 school for children with severe emotional and/or behavioral disorders. In 1996 Joanne began working with Head Start programs and Head Start families, as she did for the rest of her career. She first joined the Region IX Head Start Training and Technical Assistance Network housed at the California Institute of Human Services, Sonoma State University. She provided training and technical assistance to Head Start programs in their delivery of disabilities services for children with disabilities and their families in Arizona, California, Nevada, Hawaii, and the Outer Pacific. Then in 1998 CIHS/Sonoma State University received a grant jointly funded by the Office of Head Start and the Conrad Hilton Foundation. That grant led to the curriculum creation and delivery of the nationally acclaimed “Special Quest” mentor-coaching staff development model that supported Early Head Start programs throughout the country in delivering services for infants and toddlers with disabilities. As the National Special Quest Director, Joanne was an integral member of the team that created the “Special Quest” staff development curriculum and training workshops throughout the country. In 2002 Joanne started working as Principal Investigator for the National Head Start Family Literacy Center, becoming its Director in 2005. In that role she developed and implemented "Story Quest" workshops to show teachers and families how everyday speech and interactions at home and in the classroom provide the tools for literacy, and ways this process can differ among different cultures and languages. She also managed the research component of Story Quest, which found significant changes in the early language and literacy skills of infants and toddlers in the treatment group compared to the control group, as well as significant changes in their parents and teachers in the use of key strategies that promote language and literacy development. Later this Family Literacy Center also developed training materials for math literacy. In the final phase of her career, from 2010-2015 Joanne worked as Principal Investigator and Co-Director of the Head Start National Center on Cultural and Linguistic Responsiveness. There she developed research-based programs, materials, and frameworks to support Dual Language Learners (DLLs) and their families, including the Planned Language Approach (PLA). She also worked with seven Native American tribes to develop Making It Work (MIW), a guide for early educators to implement and use tribal cultural experiences, values and beliefs to meet school readiness goals. Joanne formally retired in 2015, but continued to do some consulting and training for several years. She also continued serving as mentor for former employees and other colleagues until her passing.