About

Helping children succeed is personal for me. My twin sons were my first students. When I found out they had dyslexia, their school could not provide intervention. I researched studies on dyslexia, designed lessons, and implemented effective strategies. When other parents and teachers saw my sons achieve academic success, they asked if I could help their children. As I took on more students with different combinations of characteristics, I continually strived to study, discover, and explore more ways to teach children how to tackle challenges associated with reading, writing, math, science, and social studies. I work with every child as though they are my own.

Since 2005, I have been working with students of all abilities as a private academic intervention tutor, providing reading, writing, and math interventions. I earned my Master’s in Education from the University of Texas at Austin in 2008. I specialized in Learning Disabilities and Behavioral Disorders. For my thesis, I formally tested my method of reading instruction on a group of students with diverse characteristics, including dyslexia, race, and socioeconomic status. Over the years, I have fine-tuned my methods and provided differentiated instruction for hundreds of students with a variety of perceptual styles and the following characteristics:

• Non-reading or reading below grade level
• Students who have dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, ADHD, Autism, and orthographic processing deficits
• Students who are in Special Education, English Language Learner, and Gifted and Talented programs
• Pre-K through 12th grade

Inspiring, motivating, and empowering students, parents, and teachers to overcome challenges and cultivate confidence, self-esteem, respect, and academic success… so we can all achieve success and happiness in our schools, homes, and lives… this has been my life’s work.

I developed a comprehensive reading program for students who were reading below grade level or struggling with decoding and fluency. Cultivating Reading and Phonics Skills is a Multisensory Reading Intervention that blends phonics, phonological awareness, spelling, and handwriting into one systematic program. This resource is effective for teachers and parents of: beginning readers, students with dyslexia, dysgraphia, ADHD, orthographic processing weaknesses, autism, and English language learners. Teachers, tutors, and parents can easily follow the step-by-step lessons to introduce orthographic spelling patterns through engaging activities.

I also created four entertaining Phonics Stories books, which systematically introduce phonics patterns. Every phonics story provides spelling and phonics word study for  Short Vowels,  Long Vowels,  The Other Vowel Sounds,  and  Advanced Long and Short Vowel Patterns.

I am also the author of Cultivating Respect and Cooperation in the Classroom and at Home. It is written for parents, teachers, and tutors who strive to meet the challenges in our modern-day learning environments. My book shares how we can be firm, have high expectations, develop our children’s and teens’ executive functions, increase respect, and motivate our children and teens to cooperate so that they can push through their challenges and achieve success.

In addition to being a private academic intervention specialist and author, I am also an advocate of children of all abilities, a mother of three children, a wife, a photographer, and a former PTA President.