ABOUT ME
I have four grown and now independent children of whom I continue to learn from and take delight in. One of them was identified as mildly dyslexic when he was in middle school, and at that time there was no one in our area that was available to work with him. This was the impetus for my pursuing the training and certification as a language therapist through a program called Alphabetic Phonics, now called Literacy Must http://www.literacymust.org/
I have been working with a wide range of students for the past twenty years and find it immensely rewarding to empower these young people with the skills they need in an area of great difficulty, and to see their self-confidence blossom and their interest in reading and writing grow.
Even though I have had great success in my work with even the most severely dyslexic students, this work takes time. All the while these young people are trying to keep pace with their peers, often resulting in stress and frustration. This is where technology comes in, offering tools that can enable them to access the curriculum while improving their skills.
For example: One of the great losses for the delayed and struggling reader is the rapid vocabulary acquisition that their peers are making as independent readers, typically by the end of third grade. However, poor readers can keep the same pace in terms of absorbing vocabulary if they listen to audio books. Public libraries are a great source, and there is Bookshare for those that qualify. //www.bookshare.org/cms
Technology has many tools to offer us. And it is this realization of how I can further help my students that has me now half way through a masters in assistive technology.
