Reading Specialist/Orton Gillingham Trained Tutor

**** *****Please note: I am not able to accommodate any additional students for the 2024-25 school year. I do not have availability on my waiting list for afternoon or afterschool services. I wish you the best of luck. ******** Hi neighbors. My name is Stacey and I have worked with hundreds of struggling readers and writers for over 25 years. I am a New York State certified reading specialist with an undergraduate degree in Speech and Language Disorders. I am trained in the Orton Gillingham method (with over 100 hours of training and 25 hours of direct mentorship) and have over 25 years experience using it. However, I am also very creative, so many of the things I do with students are my own creations which evolved over the years. I use a lot of games to help the students build their skills in fun and effective ways. I do well with students who have a hard time focusing or have shown little progress with other tutors. I also very much enjoy working with adults and teenagers with obvious gaps in their reading skills. I am registered with New York State as a SETSS provider. Some parents have had luck requesting online from their local CSE offices if they cannot find another regular rate provider with OG experience when the student is struggling despite previous attempts to read and write. I was initially trained at The Kildonan School in Upstate, New York in 1998. I spent 3 years as a tutor and classroom teacher there. I also spent five summers working for their summer program, Camp Dunnabeck. In 2001 I moved to Brooklyn and began working at another specialized school for highly intelligent but very dyslexic children. I was there for another 16 years. I have done a considerable amount of private tutoring over the years, mostly through The Children's School, PS 321, GSB (German School Brooklyn) and Mary McDowell, but have seen children from many other schools as well. I work with struggling readers who just need a boost to catch up with their classmates, as well as severely dyslexic individuals. Over the years I have enjoyed increasingly becoming involved in advocating for my students in their schools. If you want the process to get a boost to make it more affordable (less time consuming with faster results) I work with parents on specific activities they can do at home. I can also suggest to parents computer programs that work well with what we are doing in our sessions, which can be worked on at home with less parent involvement. I have always known I wanted to be a teacher. From my earliest memories in school, I knew everything was harder for me. I wanted to become a teacher because I was very aware of the fact that some teachers made me feel terrible about myself, while others built me up regardless of my struggles (thank goodness, my life was peopled with more of the latter!). I wanted to be that kindness in the world. No one understood what was wrong with me, as dyslexia is just now being more recognized and I was functioning somewhat as a reader. I made it through school, but always felt two steps behind. Right out of college I was trained in Orton Gillingham and in many ways remediated myself during that time. By the time I got to graduate school I was able to learn in a new and confident way. I had previously been diagnosed with ADD, but the bulk of my attention issues evaporated once I gained confidence in my academic skills. I am so happy to know how to help children learn early in their schooling to build their confidence and open them to the wonders of learning. I am able to supply references from other tutoring parents, parents of my classroom students and from contacts from the schools I have worked with over the years. Please reach out if I can assist you.