My Story
Becoming a certified Reading Specialist and Orton-Gillingham tutor
As a teacher and a parent I felt ill equipped to help my two dyslexic boys and that’s how I started my journey on the pursuit for solutions for my struggling readers.
At first I dove into the research, I could not read the books fast enough, watch all the videos and browse all the sites. I was surprised that, during my teacher training, this very prominent learning style was not mentioned more than in passing during one of my Special Education classes. I was frustrated that their school would not accept their diagnosis and help them but instead they put up roadblock after roadblock.
The teachers wanted to help but they did not know how. After about a year of advocating and finally moving to another state my children were able to get the accommodations they needed however the specific Orton-Gillingham instruction was still missing.
It wasn’t until I ran into a Barton tutor in my small town that I started to understand that my children were not going to get all their needs met at school. She coached me into getting the Barton System and learning how to tutor my own children. After a few months, word got around that I was tutoring my children and other parents started to ask me to tutor their children. I started with a small group of 4 students.
As any good mom-warrior out there I kept looking for solutions. With my research I ended up finding the SMILA program. SMILA is an Orton-Gillingham based teacher training program where I could take my kids to participate while I did my practicum. I opted to enroll at Christian Brothers University Graduate Program and get my Reading Certification.
I added students to my practice and started offering online tutoring as well. I have seen such an amazing difference in my students during tutoring and life changing results! I truly believe that every child can learn to read given proper instruction.
Reading is an integral part of everyday life...
Reading is one of the most complex skills children will ever master and unfortunately specific reading instruction is not prevalent in our schools past the primary grades. When I applied to be a White House Fellow the proposal I wrote was to continue reading instruction through the higher grades. Our system is assuming every child’s brain works the same and fits into this idea of “learn to read (by 3rd grade) so you can read to learn (4th grade and beyond)”. What research shows is that this is not the case at all, and we are leaving more than half of the American adult population reading at a 6th grade level or below.
Think about your everyday life, imagine all the tasks that you do that require you to read: reading directions for an appliance, reading a job application, reading an article in the media, reading an email from your boss, reading the drivers test manual or your car manual. Now imagine you cannot do any of that or you can only read to understand half of it all. Reading is such an integral part of our lives that living without this skill is considered a disability. It doesn't have to be this way, given proper instruction every child can learn to read and be successful!