While tutoring a 23-year-old man in reading as part of a literacy program, Linda Shrewsbury received a surprising request.
He wanted to be able to sign his name, but he didn't know how to write in cursive.
"When I heard the request, it just touched me," said Shrewsbury, who has worked for more than 30 years in education.
Shrewsbury knew teaching him to write cursive letter by letter, day by day for months as she had with students before, wouldn't be ideal. She needed a faster way.
She scrawled letters in cursive on a piece of white paper. Taking a step back to look, she noticed a pattern in the letters. They all could be sorted into four shape categories: oval, loop, swing and mound.
Instead of teaching her student letter by letter, she grouped letters with the same initial shape into strings of script.
So, letters such as A, D, G and Q, which began with oval shapes, would make up a string.
"When I showed it to him, he formed the entire lowercase alphabet in 45 minutes," Shrewsbury said.
After achieving similar success with other students, the Tulsa, Okla., resident realized that the instruction method she calls CursiveLogic could have widespread appeal.
She partnered with her daughter, Prisca LeCroy of East Dallas, to put together a Kickstarter campaign-funded workbook that explains the new method.
When looking up other instruction methods, Shrewsbury learned cursive was deemed an antiquated skill and is no longer taught in some schools. Instead, educators are opting for more emphasis on digital literacy.
The Common Core State Standards for education that were first adopted by select states in 2010 don't include instruction for cursive handwriting requirements. Texas is among a group of eight states that hasn't adopted Common Core.
As part of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills test, third-graders are required to be able to "write legibly in cursive script with spacing between words in a sentence." By fourth grade, students can choose to "write legibly by selecting cursive script or manuscript printing as appropriate," according to the standards.
In following with those state-required guidelines, Dallas ISD and Highland Park ISD spokespersons said their districts still teach cursive.
In Highland Park, cursive is introduced in second and third grades.
For students elsewhere who aren't being taught, Shrewsbury said the most common arguments she hears are that cursive "takes too long to teach and it's too hard."
But Shrewsbury said that the CursiveLogic method shows it doesn't have to be time consuming. Plus, writing cursive has other benefits.
"I just feel like kids read better, they write better [and] they spell better when the handwriting is a part of their skill set that they gain in school," Shrewsbury said.
And there are cognitive effects, too.
Bill Klemm, a senior professor of neuroscience at Texas A&M University, has written about the biological and psychological benefits of cursive on Psychology Today's website.
He said handwriting can help with hand-eye coordination and also stimulates the brain's executive control systems, which manages memory, reasoning, task flexibility and problem solving.
Research has shown that a person has better memory retention when writing notes versus typing them, he said.
"When you type it's sort of a brain-dead operation if you know how to type ... but when you write in cursive you're more personally engaged with the content of what you're writing," Klemm said.
And when trying to read primary source documents -- whether it's national or personal history -- the ability to read cursive is crucial, LeCroy said.
One can easily find the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence transcribed online, but there are other documents that remain only readable in cursive, she said.
"It turns out that the Constitution isn't the only important historical document written in cursive. Many of them are in fact not transcribed into print," LeCroy said.
LeCroy points to the Rosa Parks Collection on loan to the Library of Congress, which contains letters and writing drafts from the civil rights icon.
"You have to be able to read cursive to do research [into this collection]," LeCroy said.
Reading a transcription of the document means students could miss some of the nuances of how things were originally written, said Jenny Sweeney, an education specialist for the National Archives at Fort Worth.
"If you can't read cursive, then how do you know the things you are being taught about history are true or not?" Sweeney said. "You are depending on whoever that historian is, essentially their interpretation of history, because you are not able to read it on your own."
LeCroy said CursiveLogic is teaming up with the National Archives and Collin College to put on a cursive writing-focused event in February at Collin College's Spring Creek Campus in Plano.
They'd like to do more events to raise awareness about the importance of cursive writing. They're also working to get CursiveLogic workbooks in more schools.
"It's not an antiquated skill. It's actually an extremely important skill that can unlock academic success for so many students," LeCroy said.