Our mission is to empower children to learn from a position of strength, with an approach that works in harmony with their unique wiring. Our goal specifically is to reach the children who are struggling or failing, because their natural strengths do not match their learning environment.
According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, in 2019, 31% of 4th graders tested at NAEP Basic, indicating only partial mastery of basic reading skills. Another 34% tested Below Basic. 26% tested NAEP Proficient and 9% tested at NAEP Advanced. We have a crisis involving a majority of our students. Let's learn who these students are, how they learn best, and what we can do to help them.
If at first you don't succeed, don't just try, try again! Several years ago, we had Spanish-speaking friends visiting in our home. While we chatted, my husband, who doesn’t speak Spanish, started making friends with their six-year-old son, Jaime. Jaime spoke to my husband, waited expectantly for a second, then leaned into my husband’s other ear and shouted quite loudly, not realizing that what he was facing was a language barrier, not a hearing impairment. I’ve recalled that moment so often throughout the years. Each time a child is re-taught a concept when he didn’t get it the first time, I think of Jaime shouting in my husband’s other ear thinking that this time, with a new ear and louder...
Over the past ten years, I have learned about a whole array of classifications for disabilities. There are so many! One could get the impression that children are getting more and more broken, and we are developing more and more detailed labels for describing them.
By exposing children to different fonts while they are learning to read, we are teaching them to recognize the pattern of each letter. We want them to be prepared to read and recognize letters in every font.
