"I am passionate and committed to helping students of all ages become readers and life-long learners. With over 20 years experience teaching at the elementary school level, I love helping struggling readers enjoy reading success by helping them unlock the code of the English language. I understand the critical need for early identification of struggling readers so that intervention can begin in the early years to help mitigate low self-confidence and an aversion to school and reading so often present in these students. I strive to build confidence by identifying and highlighting each individual student's strengths, providing immediate, encouraging feedback, and by tracking and celebrating successes along the way. I provide a safe, loving and nurturing environment in which to learn and pride myself on building relationships and trust with each of my students.

For the past three years, I have been teaching students using the Take Flight curriculum which is a comprehensive, structured, and sequential curriculum that utilizes multi-sensory techniques for teaching reading, writing and spelling. It is effective because it focuses on the five components of effective reading as identified by National Reading Panel - phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. The Take Flight training program was a two year program which consisted of 200 course hours and over 700 clinical teaching hours.

I hold a bachelor's degree from Youngstown State University in Psychology and Master's of Science in Education with a specialty in Special Education and have extensive experience working with students who have special needs. I have experience assessing and pinpointing areas of weakness and creating individualized plans to remediate. I monitor progress and adjust lessons based on data to maximize the effectiveness of each lesson. I believe communication with parents is key, and I look forward to partnering with you to help to realize your child's reading goals." less...