My Story

I did not choose this career path. It chose me.

 

Learning was difficult for me in school. Having to read passages over and over just to grasp the meaning of words took a lot of effort and time. What was effortless for most people was a monumental task for me. I tripped over words and punctuation marks. Reading aloud was embarrassing. Confidence was a luxury that others had earned or were gifted with. Not me, shame being my constant companion.  I was called “dense”, “ditsy”, “airhead”, and “ding-dong”. One of my fifth-grade teachers told me it looked like a drunk person wrote my spelling words on the test. I ran to the bathroom and cried. The truth is I always wanted to teach children how to read, but I gave up the dream because I believed the lie about myself. There was no way I was smart enough to get in front of a group of children to teach them anything. What did I know?

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I worked very hard in school. I invented strategies out of desperation and determination to get through it. Retention of the material came after hours of writing and rewriting lecture notes and chapter notes. At the end of it was a bachelor’s degree.

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The world was my oyster. I spent 5 years in the marketing world for a major soda company before concluding that creating artwork for 20 oz. soda labels that eventually ends up in a landfill was not my passion in life.  It was my sister who nudged me in the direction of teaching. Southern Methodist University welcomed me into their Learning Therapy program to help children with written language disorders. With my eyes closed, I jumped. It was my therapy.

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I have experienced many blessings getting to work in this field. One of the best blessings was having my students be a part of the research study for Take Flight: A Comprehensive Intervention for Students with Dyslexia  (Take Flight) developed by Scottish Rite for Children. My students reading soared as they made incredible gains in their reading scores. I was sold. Becoming a trainer in Take Flight became my predetermined course.

 

Since 2001, I have worked with hundreds of children with dyslexia and dysgraphia. It is still my passion to give them the tools and strategies to learn and to help them build their confidence, creating a new vision for themselves as successful learners.