"I am passionate about helping children achieve success in reading. Reading is the fundamental skill needed for a successful life in the 21st century, the skill needed to open opportunities.

I have more than 30 years' experience tutoring children and teaching and supervising others to tutor in three non-profit organizations in Manhattan. I've worked with youngsters from Kindergarten through high school, and some adults who were unable to read at all. The children in these programs came from public, independent, and parochial schools. I hold a Master's degree in Education (M.Ed.) from Northeastern University, with a specialty in Reading. In particular I studied about remedial reading, ways to assist those who are struggling with any of a variety of aspects of the reading process, such as phonics or comprehension or vocabulary development. My specialty is aiding youngsters who are struggling with reading assignments in school, who hate reading. In Massachusetts, I am certified to teach Kindergarten - 8th grade.

It's important to capture the attention of struggling students, to give them a purpose for reading beyond getting their schoolwork done. For this reason, I identify what the student is interested in and teach based on that interest. For example, one 7th grade student, reading on a 3rd grade level, wanted to learn how to draw dinosaurs. I had a book for that - a book that included a paragraph about the dinosaur before teaching how to draw it. He read the paragraph, learned some new vocabulary and facts, and then how to draw the dinosaur. Next he wanted to read about basketball and we read a great Matt Christopher book. We worked on phonics, spelling, vocabulary, sentence structure, summarizing, assorted comprehension skills, and confidence, overcoming fear, making mistakes and learning from them, and resiliency. We played many games, some in every session. We worked hard and had a lot of fun and laughs. By the school-year end he was on a 7th grade reading level and confident in his ability t" less...