Who Am I?

 

I frowned in annoyance as my overhead lights no longer turned on when I opened my intense blue Elantra car door. Fumbling around in the abyss of my glove compartment searching for a mask or mint, I couldn’t figure out what had changed. I couldn’t see. After months of exasperation, I swallowed my pride and asked my adult son who pointed out the image of a car with the door opened on the button to activate the feature. I had an aha moment. Randomly pushing buttons and guessing, my brain had not connected that picture on the button with activating the overhead lights. With explicit instruction, the light went on, figuratively and literally. I wasn’t so dumb after all. I could drive a 2021 model car with the best of them. My self-esteem blossomed. In a similar vein, I see my struggling readers have not connected the picture of a letter with the sound associated with it. Not that they can’t do it, but that they have not been explicitly taught how to do it. Therein lies the problem with “whole language.” It doesn’t work for most children. As of 2022, 68% of fourth graders are not proficient in reading. Many schools nationally are not teaching phonics explicitly and systematically.  My most current teaching passion in 40 years of K-12 certificated experience became the science of reading.

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If you are worried that your student is behind grade level reading in K-3 and won’t be able to catch up enough in grades 5-7 when reading is no longer taught per se and students learn “by reading” in disciplines like science and social studies, now is the time to seek assistance for your child. Don’t wait to see if it resolves on its own. Chances are no amount of sitting your child down nightly to read for 20 minutes will help. I have experience and study in multisensory instruction and techniques backed up by research. I am a veteran classroom teacher/librarian and online tutor. As an independent contractor for Varsity Tutors and a sole proprietor of Threshold Tutoring, I tutor students nationally and locally who have great difficulty reading (with or without a dyslexia diagnosis), SSAT test preparation all levels, K-8 English Language Arts acceleration and enrichment, information literacy and technology, writing, and theatre arts.