"As a psychology major, I learned a lot about the brain and human behavior, which led to my interest in working with children who have learning differences. While completing my psychology degree at the College of Charleston, I was hired as an ABA therapist, working with children who have autism. We worked on language development, appropriate behaviors, social skills, and academics. Through working in this field, I began working at various schools to support my clients and was referred to Trident Academy by a client. When hired, I worked in the autism program as a teacher for our primary students. Then, I took the Orton-Gillingham course over the summer and became certified as an Orton-Gillingham instructor, specializing in teaching students with dyslexia and ADHD reading, spelling, and writing.

As an Orton-Gillingham instructor, I have worked with students from K-12. My specialty is with younger students, but I pair well with students of all ages and love working with teenagers. While following the Orton-Gillingham approach, my teaching style is multi-sensory and includes games and visually stimulating images and backgrounds to keep my students focused, engaged, and enjoying the lesson. Language skills are worked on along with reading, spelling, and writing to ensure that the student fully comprehends the meaning of the words in the target lessons. Lessons are based on concepts and skills that incorporate phonemic awareness and morphological awareness skills for decoding and encoding. Each lesson is individualized and structured and sequential, as it builds from one lesson to the next, with data taken each lesson to track the students progress before moving forward.

I have been working in the field of academics for 15 years and absolutely love it! Since 2020, my tutoring experience has been online, but I am open to in person tutoring and have a plethora of fun materials to incorporate for both online and in person tutoring! The Orton-Gillingham approach works best in a 1:1 setting." less...