I have had 30 years of teaching experience but truly found my niche when I became a Certified Academic Language Therapist 11 years ago. Besides teaching Language Arts/English for 20 years, more recently I taught at Rawson Saunders School for Dyslexics in Austin, Texas for 10 years and at the May Center for Learning in Santa Fe during this past year. The multisensory, diagnostic way of teaching lets me unlock reading, spelling, and writing skills for children who could not learn them in the past.

My teaching areas are Language Arts, English, and Dyslexia Therapy. I work with students from elementary school through high school. I love my work because the Orton-Gillingham-based programs always work, and my students' confidence grows as they learn to read and write. Seeing their eyes light up is my greatest reward.

I am an English major first and always! I love good books, and sharing them as a starting point for character studies is the heart of my teaching. I am also a writer (children's poetry books), so I can bring out creative writing abilities in my students. On the boring side, I have years of experience teaching structured sentence and paragraph composition and am an expert in grammar because I edit dissertations and actually love to teach the picky rules. I make my lessons fun and silly.

No two students are alike in the way dyslexia affects them, so teaching them has to be diagnostic and prescriptive. My years of experience with Orton-Gillingham-based programs have shown me how to assess the kids' needs and fill in the gaps. Reading and spelling patterns are taught side by side and are reinforced through cyclical practice. Vowels will act a certain way depending on their position in the word and the division patterns of that word. We break things down into chunks. I also use a writing skills program developed by an internationally renowned expert. It breaks sentences and paragraphs down into similar chunks and produces great writers.

Even though I live in Santa Fe, my programs can work online fro