I love providing Davis programs.
I began my career tutoring English to Japanese and Korean students. This grew into ownership of a tutoring company specializing in ESL. After my kids came along, I began to delve deeper into why my bright, very articulate children struggled with reading. My son could read and spell difficult words like "guitar", "friend" and "astronaut", but could not read the sight word list from Kindergarten; whenever he saw "of" he guessed: "for?" , "from?" , "off?"...While my daughter struggled more with reversals (every letter was mirrored when she wrote…no wonder she could not read, despite carrying baskets of vintage books everywhere she went).
My son’s educational psychologist handed me the book, The Gift of Dyslexia by Ron Davis - and in the very first chapters I could see the reason my children struggled. My son was super athletic and a gifted artist. My daughter was theatrical and clumsy. The Davis paradigm and Ron’s deep understanding illuminated the reasons for their gifts and the connected challenges: there are two types of thought - verbal and nonverbal; with nonverbal thought, the rate of speed of thinking is 32 pictures a second, so a child (or adult) with ADD or dyslexia symptoms tends to struggle with school.
Additionally - my son would notice every sound and motion in the classroom, which can be labeled ADHD, but can also be understood as an evolutionary advantage (except in the classroom), and my daughter would internally ‘watch’ movies in her mind while sitting in school.
With Davis strategies, they were both able to recognize disorientation, become calmer and more grounded, and use visual strategies for reading. The results were amazing.
I started the training and shifted my focus to providing Davis programs for all ages, and shifted the focus of my tutoring company to support visual, kinesthetic learning: kids and adults with diagnoses of ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, and other learning struggles.
I love helping clients of all ages realize the struggle is simply because s/he is really gifted at thinking visually and kinesthetically. That s/he is not ‘broken’.
Licensed to provide:
Licensed since: October 28, 2008
Certifications:
Travel: I only work at my own premises
Online services: I only coach in person
Delivery Languages: EnglishEnglish
From the parent of a young adult client:
I want to let you know that my family is so grateful for what you and the program did for our son. After he went through the program with you in 2016, he came back a different person. More confident and eager to read. You changed his life and he has blossomed ever since. He was able to finish his degree in Cyber Security. He worked as a restaurant greeter. When the staff could not figure out some computer issues, he was able to quickly figure out, repair and suggest how the system would run smoother. During this time he was studying to get certifications for cyber security which was very challenging for him because of test taking and the content. The IT department at CPK offered him an internship, which became a full time job in the IT department. This past year he was offered one of the first positions to be on the Cyber Security Team- a new department. I say all this to say THANK YOU!! If it was not for you and the program he may not be where he is today! You changed his life and we will be forever grateful ! Oh, he is in escrow to buy his first condo!
From the parent of a former client from 2016, who in 7th grade read at a first grade level:
I’m happy to tell you that she just started as a freshman at UCLA! She wants to study neuroscience and disability, a passion that’s been largely fueled by her desire to understand neurodiversity and to shape the way we talk about it. I’m proud of her for how well she did academically, but I’m much, much more proud of her for everything she did to advocate for neurodiverse students while she was in high school.
She’s still as dyslexic as ever—but that didn’t stop her from being one of the top students at ***, where she went to high school. I’m proud of her for how well she did academically, but I’m much, much more proud of her for everything she did to advocate for neurodiverse students while she was in high school.
I think every single student in that school knew that she was dyslexic, and she totally changed the conversation (for the teachers and the students) about what it means to be neurodiverse and what the school should be doing to accommodate these students.
This is probably more than you wanted to hear when you sent your text—but we mention you often in our family, because you helped her so much. She still practices a lot of what you taught her and has said that she’d love to do a refresher with you at some point. I hope you have some sense of what a big difference you made her life! I think it was partly the tools you gave her and partly just who you are and how you talked about her dyslexia.
