Hi! I’m so excited you’re here! A little about me: I have enjoyed tutoring students in math, science, and test preparation since 2002. After college, I worked as a classroom teacher in both middle and high school. Subsequently, I took a circuitous route to tutoring full-time, including working with legal finance and attending University of Houston Law School. I loved working with students one-on-one and seeing their confidence improve by leaps and bounds.

After I had my own child, I realized that my son was a little slow to learn to read, spoke unclearly, and struggled with phonemic awareness. We found low(er)-cost testing at UHCL, and after a few days of testing, he didn’t have a clear diagnosis that would explain what was wrong. After a great deal of searching and trial and error, I found several resources that helped him so much: we worked to improve his visual system, we worked on reading with Dyslexia-friendly resources, and developed a very strong foundation of phonemic and phonological awareness.

I have been trained in the Orton-Gillingham Approach (OG), and I use the Barton Method as a basis for my reading tutoring. I have also taken classes from the Neuhaus Education Center, and I use the material from those courses to supplement the OG lessons. Additionally, I supplement every class with ocular motor and visual perceptual activities.

After seeing my own child’s success with these methods, I’ve decided to start tutoring

SERVICES

READING TUTORING

After having my own child who struggled with learning to read, I fully immersed myself in learning about the science of reading. I learned about visual perceptual skills, phonemic and phonological awareness, and evidence-based methods for teaching reading. I took courses from the Neuhaus Education Center and Barton Reading to learn the OG Approach.

After seeing how well my own child learned with these methods, I decided to start tutoring other children. These methods can make a difference in the lives of struggling readers. If your child is frustrated with reading, or if it’s more difficult than it should be, I’m happy to help!

Reading lessons are each 25-minutes long and are divided into three portions: Visual System, OG (or phonemic awareness), Phonemic/Phonological Awareness. As a student advances, we work on handwriting, speaking, and even Latin and Greek roots. I can also supplement each lesson with study skills, organizational skills, and executive functioning activities as necessary.

For the best outcome, I recommend students take lessons up to four times per week, but I also know what it’s like to be a busy parent, so I will work with your schedule. You can also chose to have your child take two 25-minute classes in one day.

MATH TUTORING

In my experience with tutoring math, I haven’t met anyone who is just “bad at math”. I have, however, met lots of students who have gaps in their conceptual understanding of math.

Think of math skills like language acquisition—take French, for example. If you already speak Spanish and Italian, but you miss the first few classes of your French class, you will probably do fine on your next French test. Now imagine that you are learning Navajo without any knowledge of other Athabaskan languages, and you missed the first few classes. You will be completely confused by the time the test rolls around!

Math is confusing for everyone at some point. The question to ask is which group you more identify with—the French learners or the Navajo learners. When I work with students who are struggling in math, I recommend taking several lessons a week so we can have time to go back and review foundational information and also help with the immediate issues like hard homework problems and studying for tests and quizzes.

The Voyager math tutoring program employs a flipped classroom, where the student watches videos on the subjects and does a few practice problems before the tutoring session. During the tutoring session, the student and tutor work to deepen understanding. Finally, the student will complete a few more practice problems the next day (or homework problems assigned by the classroom teacher).

Reading INSTRUCTIONAL METHODS

NEUHAUS EDUCATION CENTER
BARTON METHOD
ORTON-GILLINGHAM APPROACH

MATHEMATICAL STUDIES INSTRUCTIONAL METHODS

Multiple Lessons per Week
Flipped Classroom
Executive Functioning/Working Memory Development
Dysgraphia and Dyscalculia Resources
Finding and Filling Math Gaps