On the Spectrum Empowerment Stories with Sonia Krishna Chand: Adult Autism, Neurodivergent, and Mental Health Expert

How Systematic Reading Instruction Transforms Dyslexia And Dysgraphia with Daniela Feldhausen

• Sonia Krishna Chand | Adult Autism and Neurodivergent Mental Health Expert | Empowerment Coaching • Season 2 • Episode 50

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Struggle with reading doesn’t mean a child can’t learn; it means they haven’t been taught in a way their brain can use. We sit down with Daniela Feldhausen—who left a 25-year law career to build Kids Up Reading Tutors—to unpack how precise screening and science-backed instruction turn confusion into clarity for students with dyslexia and dysgraphia. No buzzwords, just a workable roadmap: phonological awareness to hear sounds, phonics patterns that match English’s quirks, and morphology to decode and spell longer words with confidence.

We walk through the intake process parents can expect, from conversation to screeners that reveal whether the problem is decoding or language comprehension. Daniela explains the simple view of reading and shows why explicit, systematic teaching is the most reliable route to fluent reading and accurate spelling. You’ll hear concrete examples—AI saying A, the silent e and doubling rules, ED’s three sounds—and how these patterns become automatic through guided practice. We also tackle the real-world puzzle of IEPs: how to request evaluations in writing, set meaningful goals, and coordinate with special education teams without losing sight of foundational skills when school pacing surges ahead.

What stands out is the hope. Older learners can still become fluent. Progress shows up on school benchmarks, placements change, and confidence rebounds when instruction matches the student’s needs. If you’re a parent feeling anxious or overwhelmed, this conversation delivers clarity and next steps you can take today to support your child’s reading journey.

If this helped, tap follow, share with another parent who needs some hope, and leave a review so more families can find these tools. To learn more, please visit https://www.kidsupreadingtutors.com/


SPEAKER_00:

Hello everyone and welcome to today's episode. For most people, when they learn to read and write, it comes naturally with time and they improve with time. But for a lot of kids, learning to read and write takes on a whole special challenge in and of itself. And it doesn't come quite as quick or quite as natural than it does to other kids. And here to discuss helping navigate those difficulties with people who have, in particular, dysgraphia and dyslexia is Daniela Feldhausen. Daniela has a law degree and used to do intellectual property, corporate law. And she now has is the founder of Kids Up Reading Tutors, helping kids develop their reading and writing skills. So without further ado, let's please welcome Daniela. Thank you so much for being here today. Absolutely. I'm very happy to be here, Sonia. So, Daniela, can you tell us a little bit about now what drew you? Because you went from getting a law degree, being in corporate law, doing intellectual property and licensing licensing agreements to now you're doing um kids up reading tutors, you started that project up, which is a complete deviation away from the corporate legal field. So what so tell us a little bit about your background because this is interesting because I too I mean I also had a law degree as well, but now I do psychotherapy. Um so I mean, so I always very curious for people who left the law field like myself. What drew you away?

SPEAKER_01:

There are a lot of us ex-lawyers out there. Um it wasn't so much that something drew me away or pushed me out. It was just, you know, I had been a lawyer for about 25 years, and I think I needed uh something different in my life. I don't think it was really anything too terribly complicated. Um I but I decided one day that I was I was done being a lawyer and I wanted to do something else. And what I really wanted to do was teach kids to read. I've been volunteering in a local public school or in various local public schools for years and years, um, just part of the local, you know, granny brigade, basically, kid, you know, people in the neighborhood who were coming in to help read with kids who weren't necessarily grannies. I was not. Um and I just loved it. Um, and so when I decided I was wanted to do something else, I decided I really wanted to teach kids to read. And so I went back to school uh in my 50s, early 50s, and I got a master's degree in special ed and did a bunch of training for how to teach dyslexic kids to read uh and spell. And then I ultimately started up this tutoring company. And we're now 15 tutors about a month or so ago. We had about 70 students, many of them on the East Coast, um, but other students across the country and even a handful of students outside of the country. So we were about 70 students about a month ago. Right now we're at about 50, I don't know, 50 some. Um the numbers always dip at the beginning of the school year because people always hire us to work with their students over the summer with the goal of getting them caught up to grade level by the time the new school year starts. And so we were successful at doing that again with a whole bunch of our students. And so our numbers came down in September when everyone went back to school, and now they're slowly starting to build up again. That's kind of our normal pattern for the yearly cycle. Yeah, I uh we teach kids to read. That is the only thing we do. So we're a tutoring company specifically focused on kids who are having trouble with reading and spelling. So we don't do math, we don't do, you know, we're not general tutors, we don't help with homework. I mean, you know, occasionally we'll, you know, some of the reading material will be something that a child's supposed to be doing his homework, or if they have spelling tests at the end of the week, we can help prepare them for that. Um, but really we are very, very much focused on teaching kids those foundational reading skills that they need in order to be good fluent readers and good spellers.

SPEAKER_00:

So, what is the process like? So when people call in and they say, my son or my daughter needs help, so like what's the process when somebody comes in? What is the first thing you kind of look at and assess for?

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, yeah. I mean, the first thing I do is have a conversation with the parents. Um, I'm trying to learn more about the student, trying to learn more about where the issues might be. Um, most of the time when people you know reach out, um, the you know, the biggest questions or problems on their mind have to do with reading and spelling. Um, but sometimes actually there are other sort of related issues that might lead me to refer them to someone else. Um, for example, sometimes you know, families will come in and say, oh, the big problem is with reading comprehension. And then when I dig a little bit deeper, or when we dig a little bit deeper in that conversation, in that initial intake, um, it turns out the problems aren't so much with reading and spelling. The problems are more with um the with language itself, with understanding language. Um, so if it's more of a language issue, then I'll refer students to a speech language pathologist. But most of the time it really is a reading-spelling issue. Then in the um, we'll we'll set up a session where I do screeners with the students. And in the screeners, then um I will check their phonological skills and their phonic skills. Depending on what I see there and, you know, the conversation I had with the parents ahead of time, I might also be checking, um, doing some spelling screeners as well. But basically, I'm checking to see what skills does the student have and what skills do they still need to learn, so that when we're tutoring them, we can focus on exactly those skills that the student needs to learn. So we have a program, systematic, explicit instruction, all the different skills that are taught to help students become fluent readers, uh, good spellers, kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade. Um, but we're not gonna start with every student at the beginning of that program and march through all of the different aspects of it. We're gonna check and see exactly what that student needs, and then we tailor our instruction to precisely those skills that the student needs to learn. I mean, there are some students who do need to start at the beginning, but many, many, many of them, in fact, have more, you know, I'll say holes to plug, um, as opposed to having to really start at the beginning and learn all of it from square one.

SPEAKER_00:

Because, you know, when you look at like the reading development, right? So, like when you look at like studying child development, for example, right, and you see there are different levels of reading. I used they called them, I think, the three R's from what I remember learning about. And it's more the beginning is you sound out the words, right? And you just read the sentence out loud. And then with the highest level of reading being that it's comprehension and that you understand point of view and comprehension. How do you feel like that progression of reading that people are normally taught? How do you think that kind of fits in with the work that you do? And where do you see some of it being maybe perhaps not as effective or useful with the people you work with?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So really interesting question. There's a body of research out there called the science of reading, which is basically the last 20 or so years worth of research into how children learn to read and spell. Um, and what we've learned through that is that kids need to have strong phonological skills. They need to know their phonics patterns, they need to learn about morphology, they need to practice with their fluency, they need to learn the spelling rules. All of those are super important in developing those early reading skills, I'm gonna say, um, at spelling skills. Um, their ability to get the words off the page, so to literally like read like those, that combination of letters, what is that word? So we call that decoding in my world. Um, so all of those skills combine to help kids learn to decode the words, get them off the page, and then encode the words or put them back on the page. So that's uh probably the early part of what you are describing. In order to have strong reading comprehension, kids need to be able to get the words off the page. They need to be able to read those words, and then they also have to have strong language skills. So we work on the first part of that equation. It's literally like it's called the simple view of reading, and it basically says reading comprehension is a product of your ability to get the words off the page and your ability with language. We work on the first piece of that, helping kids become fluent readers, being able to read those words on the page fluently with so little effort that there's plenty of mental energy left to worry about what it means. If the kids can read fluently, but they don't understand what it is that they're reading, then that's more of a language issue. Um, and that's one of the things I try to tease out in that initial conversation with the parents. If their child is having a language issue as opposed to a getting the words off the page issue, then they should probably go to a speech language pathologist and work with a speech language pathologist to figure out exactly what's going on there. Um, and for there are some kids for whom both of these things are an issue. Like the vast majority of pay of families, you know, who approach us, it's very clear that reading spelling is the issue. Once we solve the reading spelling issue, the students are good to go. There was there's no underlying problem with language. Um, and then there are other students, those are the ones we refer right away, where it's very clear that no, reading isn't the problem, the language is the problem. And those we refer to speech language pathologists. There are some students for whom both of these things are a problem. As a general matter, I would say, like, if you have to choose between having strong oral language skills and having strong reading and writing skills, you might want to focus on the oral language skills first. And then once that is sorted out, then come back to us and then work with us on the reading spelling piece of the equation. Um, but you know, if your child has multiple issues, as as parents know, you can't solve everything at once. Um, so you have to you have to choose. You have to choose whatever is most important in that moment, work on that, and then move on to the next.

SPEAKER_00:

I know that for people with dyslexia, getting words off the page in and of itself is a a major challenge. So, how do you work through with somebody who has that kind of a challenge in getting words off the page? What is it that you teach or train them to do so that it becomes more manageable?

SPEAKER_01:

Sure, sure. Yeah. So that's the um, so that's why we start with those screeners up front where I'm checking phonological skills and phonic skills. Most of the students who come to us have very poor phonological skills. Phonological skills are basically it's about your ability to take a word, pull it apart into syllables, or then later break those syllables into smaller and smaller pieces until you're ultimately able to take a word, break it into its individual sounds, delete a sound, add a sound, substitute a sound, and then put that whole thing back together again and turn it into a new word. So it's really, and it's it's about how your brain is wired. For some people, you know, you say that to them and they're like, well, of course, sounds are words and words are sounds, yeah. But to kids who are dyslexic, that is not at all obvious. They don't necessarily realize that words are composed of individual sounds and that they can string sounds together in different combinations to get different words. And if you don't understand that that's how our reading and writing system works, that makes it really difficult to learn to read and write in any kind of efficient way. Like if, for example, if you don't know that the AI combination is pronounced A, let's say you've got a teacher standing in front of the classroom telling you that AI, that combination, is pronounced A. When you see AI together in a word, pronounce that a. If you as a student don't realize, well, I can put an n, an N in front, and then an ol or an L in the back, and then string those together to get nail or R in front and then N in back. You know, I mean there are lots of different words that you can make with that AI. If you don't realize that you can do that, you can put a sound in front, you can put a sound and back, maybe another sound front, another sound and back, and you can get a word by doing that. If you don't understand that that's how our system works, why is this teacher telling me that AI is pronounced A? Like it doesn't, it doesn't make any sense. So the kids don't really know what to do with that information. And so even when they're getting phonics instruction, it doesn't stick because their brain, they don't really know what to do with that information. So a lot of it just tends to go in one ear and out the other. Um, so the phonological skills, I guess I'm at the very beginning of answering your question. I'm just realizing. So I'll keep going. Sorry. Um, so you have to have strong phonological skills. That's a key part. And it's a key part of the reason why kids might be diagnosed with dyslexia. Not the only reason, but a very important one. So you have to have strong phonological skills. And then you have to know those phonics patterns in English. And those phonics patterns in English are much more difficult, much more involved than the phonics patterns in a lot of other languages, for example. So English, German, there are a bunch of other languages that have what we call a much more shallow orthography. So those correspondences between the sounds and the letters are much easier to learn. They're much less complex. In English, that's much more complicated. And there are a lot of phonics patterns that kids have to learn. So they need to have strong phonological skills, they need to have strong phonics skills. Um, you also need to teach kids morphology. A lot of being able to read and spell in English is dependent on your understanding that if you have, let's say, a multisyllabic word, you might have a prefix and then a base or a root word and then a suffix on the end. And those are the prefix you could take off. The suffix you could take off. By adding a prefix or adding a suffix or deleting one of those, you're changing the meaning of the word. And oh, by the way, we have a bunch of spelling rules that say when you add a suffix to the end of a word, you might have to change something in that word as you're adding the suffix. And that, of course, is going to affect your reading and your spelling. So if you have the word hope and you want to take hope and you want to turn it into hoping, we've got a spelling rule, the silent E rule or the magic e-rule that says if you've got hope and you want to make it hoping, you have to drop that e before you add the ing. Right. And then there's something called the doubling rule. If you've got hop and you want to make it hopping, you have to double the P. And if you don't double that P, you're gonna end up with hoping. Right. And so kids need to learn these, otherwise, they're gonna look at H-O-P-I-N-G and not know whether that's hoping or hopping. Or maybe even look at H O P P I N G and not even know and not know whether that's hoping or hopping.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, because one thing I've noticed though, too, when with people with uh dyslexia, you know, and some of the clients I've worked with is for them, one of their major challenges was remembering how words are spelled, how they are written, how they how things are put down when even though they may be thinking it, but just being able to translate what they're thinking onto the page as well, right? So is this that too? Is this also where you have to practice with them just like the basic letters because how they are shaped, how they sound, like just going back to that simple basics, is that where they also would need to be directed?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean, some kids absolutely need help or need instruction in how to form the letters. Absolutely. Most of the kids, so we work with kids in grades one through 12 and a handful of college students. Most of the time, by the students come to us, by the time they come to us, they know how to form the vast majority of their letters. So that's not usually the biggest problem. So many kids have trouble with a handful. One thing that we see sometimes, for example, is that children will seem to be capitalizing something in the middle of the word. So they're writing a word and then suddenly there's a capital P in the middle of the word. And you're looking at it going, well, why did they capitalize the P right in the middle of that word? And then what you can do is ask them, hey, do me a favor, write out the lowercase alphabet. And so on that special, you know, paper that younger children will have in the early grades, um, you know, with the dotted lines and the and the solid lines, so they know exactly where they're supposed to be placing these things. And so if you have them write out the lowercase alphabet on that special handwriting paper, what you'll see in those cases for those kids is that they'll write a capital P when they get to the P. So they think that that's how the lowercase P is formed. They're not intentionally capitalizing the P in the middle of the word. They just don't realize that what they wrote is a capital P and not a lowercase P. So that's where the handwriting, like, you know, influences the spelling in those kinds of situations. Um, but to get to the, I think, broader aspect of what you were talking about, in order to be a good speller, you have to have strong phonological skills. You need to be able to pull that word apart. You need to be able to listen for each of those individual sounds, you need to know those phonics patterns. Um, so you need to know, for example, that, well, we have lots of different ways of spelling the long A sound in a word, um, just to stick with that long A. If you're writing a word and you need a long A sound, well, it could be spelled with just an A, like bagel. If it's the end of a syllable but not the end of the word, it's likely to be A, bagel, bacon, you know, things like that. If it's an A at the end of a word, it's likely to be A Y, like play or stay. If that A sound is in the middle of the word, it's most likely to be an A magic E, like name or lake. Um, but if you write that and that doesn't look right, well, try it with an AI. It might be an AI, it might be the way that you need to be spelling that A sound. That doesn't look right either. Try an E A, because sometimes we use the E A, like great and break. And those are just the most common ones. There are others like you know, slay and weigh, E I G H. You know, so there are more and more, but those are probably the five or six most common ones. Um, and so one of the things we do with kids is that we teach them all of those different patterns, all of the most common ones. We don't teach them every single phonics pattern in English, but we teach them all of those most common ones. And then we ask them to be able to rattle off, okay, tell me all the ways you know to spell the long A sound. Tell me all the ways you know to spell the long E sound. What are your options for spelling ow? What are your options for spelling oi? And we want kids to know all of those and to be able to rattle them off quickly so that when they're writing a word and they get to that oi sound, you know, that could be OI or OY. Well, is it at the end of a, you know, so there are different rules around when to use which one, not most of which are not 100%, but they at least, you know, give you a good starting point. Um, so you need, so going back to spelling, again, there are so many aspects of this, but you need strong phonological skills to be a good speller. You need to know those phonics patterns forwards and backwards in order to be a good speller. You need to understand the rules of morphology. So you need to understand, for example, so morphology is about, you know, bits and pieces of words that have meaning. So in English, for example, we use the E D, the letters E D, to show that something is past tense. But that E D can be pronounced in three different ways. It can be pronounced like d, like spelled. I spelled that word correctly. You spell that d sound not with a D, like you might somewhere else, like when dog, you spell it with an E D because it's actually saying past tense. It's telling you that that spelling happened in the past. So you have to spell that d with an E D. Right. Um, it could be a T sound, like dished. Um I I don't know, I dished out some advice. I don't know, bad example, but in any event, that ed is pronounced like a T. Or it could be that E D could be pronounced like an id, like lasted. And so you in order to be a good speller, you need to, when you hear that word lasted, you need to realize, oh, okay, well, that's a verb, and then that id at the end is telling me that it's a past tense, that it's already happened. And so that means I have to spell that id, or in the other examples, d or t with an ed. So that's just one example, but morphology, like how words are put together, like the different smaller pieces of words and how do we put them all together is super, super important also in spelling. Sure. Um, and I can go on and on. Like if you got multi-syllabic words, if you've got these big long words, you want, in order to be a good speller, you need to be able to realize, okay, well, this is a prefix, let me just take that off and consider that separately. This is a suffix, let me take that off and consider that separately. Okay, now I'm dealing with this middle piece. Okay, now I should think about not so we're already close to the base word. Is there maybe another word that's related to that word that's gonna help me spell it? So just a different example. If you're trying to spell the word heard, I was working on this with a child yesterday, heard, like I heard you. My ears are working fine. I heard you when you said that. In order to spell herd, you've got to be thinking, oh, that heard. Hmm, how are you gonna know that that is spelled H-E-A-R-D and not H-E-R-D? And the way you know that is by thinking about a related word, which is here. I hear you. And if you know that here, as in I hear you, is spelled H-E-A-R, then you can use that knowledge to help you spell her with H-E-A-R-D instead of H H E R D. So that's how this morphology and the meaning of words and looking at related words can really, really help you be able to spell in English. So it's not just what kids are doing in first grade where it's oh, listen for the sound and then write down the letter that goes with the sound. That's great for first grade. Wonderful if kids are doing that in first grade. But as they develop and learn more about our language, it becomes much more sophisticated. And there are a whole lot of things that you need to be thinking about as you're spelling a word.

SPEAKER_00:

Just hearing you go through that process and what goes into helping people understand phonics and morphology, it just, you know, it makes you take for granted, in some ways, right, like all the rules that go into it that we don't think about every day. Right. Because it's easy, you know, like reading, writing stuff down. We don't think about, okay, this is how things have to go. It's just you do it. But when it becomes a challenge to do it, you start realizing that there is so much to the English language.

SPEAKER_01:

There really is.

SPEAKER_00:

English was not my parents' first language. But I remember them, and even other people have said this before about English being one of the hardest languages to learn when it's not your first language, just because of all these rules that you talk about and bring out to the surface that if you're a native English speaker, you don't have to think about as much, right? And so it just goes to show like it's there's a lot of like complexity in language and how we use language and words and how we form words.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. Um, and you know, sometimes I'll talk to parents in that initial conversation and they're like, well, but why does my child need to learn all of these phonics patterns? I don't know all of these phonics patterns. Why is that important? Um, and the, I mean, so one answer to that is, well, it's not that important for everyone. Some people can get away without explicit instruction in all of those phonics patterns. Some people just kind of pick this up. Um, you know, I call it biosmosis. It's of course not really osmosis. Um, but you know, they say that about 30% of kids go into school already knowing how to read. Nobody taught them to read. They just figured it out. Um, and then maybe another 30% or so, you just give them a little bit of instruction. You know, generally you're talking to them about how this thing works, and you know, they have to sound things out from left to right, and they just like, oh, okay, and they're off to the races. And they learn these patterns, both for reading and spelling purposes, just by doing it. They can just kind of pick it up. But there's a full 40% of the population that doesn't, that isn't going to just kind of pick it up. There's a full 40% of the population that needs really good instruction in all of these things. So we say that somewhere between 10 and 20% of the population has dyslexia. But there are a lot more people beyond the folks who have dyslexia who just need really good instruction. And so that's what, you know, so you give these folks the, the, these kids the instruction that they need, and they end up being able to read and spell beautifully. They just needed that instruction. Um, and for some kids, like the kids with dyslexia, they need a lot of that instruction. So everybody in the 40%, but really everybody, benefits from this kind of good instruction that explicitly teaches all of these different things. But the kids in the 40% and the kids in the in the 10 to 20% um categories, they really need more and they need a lot of it. It doesn't mean that they're gonna need to know those phonics patterns for the rest of their lives. Like most of us, you know, learned those things when we were first, second, third grade. We learned the spelling rules. But I suspect an hour ago, you know, before we started talking, if I had asked you, so what's the magic E rule? You probably would have looked at me like, huh?

SPEAKER_00:

You're right.

SPEAKER_01:

I probably would have. Yeah, you don't need to know that anymore. You learned it when you were a child and it just became second nature to you. And then you can forget it again. That's totally fine. You don't need to, you know, at the age of however old you are, you don't need to be able to recite the magic E rule. You don't need to be able to tell someone, you know, what the Y rule is in spelling. Um, you're just doing it. Like once you learned it, you learned how to apply it, you got plenty of practice with it, you can do it, and then you can just forget all about it again. So it's not that you have to know and remember all of these things forever and ever, but you have to learn them in order to become a good reader and speller.

SPEAKER_00:

No, absolutely. With all the work that you do, I presume that a lot of the people that come to you have an IEP at school. I'm wondering how is it that you have perhaps coached some parents, or maybe if you've done it yourself, have gone and sat in and an IEP meeting? How have you kind of navigated or helped families navigate those?

SPEAKER_01:

Sure, sure. Yeah, I'm gonna say about half of the kids we work with have an IEP. They have an existing diagnosis of dyslexia and they're already getting support at school. Uh, the other half of them don't. Sometimes the families really want an IEP. Sometimes the families really want their student to be tested. You have the right as a parent to have your child tested for learning disabilities. So if you think your child's got dyslexia, And you want the school to do that testing, you have the right to get your child tested through school. And, you know, there's a there's law about it, um, and there's a clock that starts ticking. But the clock doesn't start ticking until you make that request in writing. So if this is important to you, yes, absolutely talk to the teacher, talk to the principal, talk to, but then also send them an email and say, hey, I'm here by, you know, formally asking that you test my child for dyslexia and whatever else might be appropriate in that situation. And that will then start the clock ticking and then they will test your child. If your child is then found to have these issues, then they'll get an IEP, an individualized education program. They will get put into special ed or exceptional ed, depending on what it's called, in your district. Um, and then they'll get a certain number of, it's usually calculated in terms of minutes per week of additional help from the special education teacher. And that can take a couple different forms. It can be done in the form of what's called a push-in, where the special education teacher comes into the classroom. It could be done in the form of a pull out where your child is taken out of the classroom and maybe goes to the special ed classroom. So there are different models in different school districts. Your child will get goals, and you, as the parent, have the right, you have input into what those goals for your child should be. And the goals should include things like, you know, learning the different phonics patterns that your child has not yet learned, learning those phonological skills that are so, so important. What's tricky though is that these kids need a lot of work. They need a lot of phonological instruction. They tend to need a lot of phonics instruction. And the schools aren't really set up to provide as much instruction as these kids need. So even if you've got a special ed teacher who knows exactly how to teach dyslexic kids to read, if he or she is dealing with, well, you know, I've got a group of 10 kids, um, and I'm supposed to be teaching all 10 of these kids to read, and we're doing it three times a week for 30 minutes, that's not likely to get your child caught up. And in fact, you know, one of the conversations you might want to have as you're going through this IEP process is maybe have a conversation with a special ed teacher about how often has this program in school actually gotten kids caught up to their peers in reading and spelling so that they can then graduate out of special ed. And the vast majority of cases that is not happening in schools. Because again, even if the teacher is like highly, highly trained, knows exactly how to do this, there aren't enough hours in the day to do everything that schools need to do. They don't have enough time, they don't have enough resources. And so the vast majority of kids, once they are in special ed, they stay in special ed. And yes, they make progress toward their goals, but the goals are learn these phonics patterns or learn these skills or learn those skills. It isn't ultimately get my child caught up in reading and graduate them out of special ed. Like that's not realistic for most IEPs and most students and most special ed programs. So if that's your goal for your child, you're gonna have to most likely go outside of your regular public school system and get some outside tutoring help. And so that's that's what we do. That's why people come to us.

SPEAKER_00:

Is there ever a time that you've been to an IEP meeting or have sent parents to an IEP meeting where they request something comparable be done in the time that, let's say, there is that push-in time with the special teacher in the classroom, or they're taken to a special education room per se to get additional help. Has there ever been a time where perhaps you guys collaborated together with the school and you both worked on things so that you guys are reunited? It's just you both are in synchronous synchronicity with each other.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Um yes, so we do absolutely coordinate with the schools. The school, when parents request it, they don't always want it. But usually what that means is that we'll talk to the school and the school will say, okay, this is the program we're following, this is what we're doing. This week we're gonna be working on this skill, that week we're gonna be working on that skill. And then to the extent it works with what we're doing, we will then adapt what we're doing. So if they're working on the OU that week and your child is learning their vowel teams with us, then absolutely we can do work on the OU that week so that they're getting a double dose, so that they're getting that OU learning at school and with us. But if your child is, let's say they're in fourth grade and in special ed, and this was actually one young man I was working with, he was a fourth grader, he was in special ed. Um, and the parents had asked me to coordinate with a special ed teacher. And the special ed teacher told me, okay, well, we're currently working on decoding multisyllabic words with bossy R. Um, bossy R is also called the R-controlled vowels. So those are like A R is pronounced R, E-R-I-R-U-Rs, or O Rs, or. So in school, what they were working on, that unit was multisyllabic words with our controlled vowels. And I said to the to the SPED teacher, but this child can't read a one-syllable word with our controlled vowels. And unfortunately, the SPED teacher's response was, there's nothing I can do about that. This is what I'm required to teach. And I can't go back and just do what this student needs. This is what I'm doing for the group of students that I'm working with. And so we then did our best to teach the child as much about our controlled vowels at the single, at the one-syllable level, before they then had that, you know, work in school to work on the multisyllabic words with the R-controlled vowels. So if the school is following a particular program, that's great, that's wonderful. But if the kids are missing too much of the earlier material, that makes it very difficult because they need to, I mean, reading is, you know, like math. You have these foundational skills. You want your child to be really strong in the kindergarten skills, and then you build the first grade skills on top of that, and then you build the second grade skills on top of that. And then you build, you know, so it's a, you know, it's a ladder, it's a structure. And if you've got a weak foundation and you're trying to teach a child multi how to read multisyllabic words, but they can't read one-syllable words, it's not going to work so well. So coordinate in theory, coordination with schools is wonderful. And there are absolutely times when it's worked beautifully. Um, there are other times when the conversation has been more around, well, you know what? We think the child isn't ready for that yet. We're actually going to work on those foundational skills that they missed, and we will eventually get to what you're gonna work on them, work with them on in SPED. I think I messed those words up. But so they need those foundational, those earlier skills before they can learn those more advanced skills. So we're gonna actually take the time to teach them those foundational skills that they're missing and then build on top of that rather than jumping into whatever's being taught in school, if if that doesn't make sense. Sometimes it makes sense, but sometimes it doesn't. So, yes, we coordinate with schools. Sometimes it works beautifully, and other times we we have to do our own thing because the child isn't quite ready for what's happening in school, even in the special ed program. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, absolutely. And I was just gonna ask you this too, with the children who struggle and are having difficulty keeping up even with what's happening in the special education classes, what have you found then when they come and get the extra help outside? You know, how is it that they're able to kind of reconcile between being at school where they're where they're sitting in a class where they're not able to quite be up to speed versus they're catching up to speed outside of school? Like what have you seen? How have they been able to reconcile the two?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it um so what we do actually gets kids up and reading. It's actually amazing. Um, and parents are just so, so, so happy with this progress. Um, so the kids will absolutely um learn to become, you know, good readers and good spellers. Um, and sometimes the good thing is that in schools, kids are tested at a minimum of three times a year, like whether or not they're in special ed in those early grades, you know, kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade, they're doing beginning of year, middle of year, and then end of year reading testing with those kids. Um and parents will generally get the results of all of that testing. So if a child works with us for a few months, let's say at the beginning of the year, they were way behind uh grade level expectations, and the parents, you know, bring this student to us and we work with the student, and then by middle of the year, that student is caught up, or at least they've made dramatic progress. You know, the parents will come back to us and say, look at this, look at this graph I just got from my student school, or look at these test scores that we just got. And then middle of the year, then sometimes these kids can be moved maybe out of this group and into a different reading group, or then maybe their goals can be changed in special ed. We've had kids who were on 504 programs, and then middle of the year, the 504 plan was dropped because the student didn't need it anymore, um, and things like that. So the big shifts are when the school does that, you know, that standardized testing, and the school goes, oh, wait a minute, this child can now suddenly read. And that's when they can then adapt what's happening in school to sort of catch up with the reality of, oh, wow, this child has actually made a ton of progress in the past few months. So that's a little bit harder to do in the middle of the semester. You know, in October or November, you go to your teacher and you say, Well, you want your child moved to a different reading group. That may or may not be successful. Um, but they will generally reconstitute those re reading groups and they will rethink things, you know, at the semester break. So in January or whenever that is in your school district.

SPEAKER_00:

What piece of inspirational advice would you give to families who have kids right now who are struggling and parents who are just maybe feeling beside themselves because they are really hurting for their kid and really are feeling like scared in some ways, maybe, or just feeling heartbroken that their kids struggle so much, whereas they may be seeing other people's kids excelling in an area. So, how do what was what piece of advice or inspirational message can you give?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, uh, these kids can learn to read. They can absolute, absolutely learn to read. I talk to a lot of families of older kids in particular, and a lot think, well, you know, but we missed it. We missed out, we didn't do this in second grade or third grade. Is it too late now? Um, and no, it's not too late. We can absolutely take a high school student who's not reading and turn them into a fluent reader. And when parents hear that, they, you know, the stress level comes way down. Um, and everyone just feels a whole lot better. I've talked to a lot of families who initially were very, very worried about their children, you know, crying, well, my child, you know. And I can reassure them that no, no, no, the vast majority of kids we work with end up fluent readers and good spellers. There are some kids who will always need that extra time that they get often when they have an IEP when they're in special ed. Um, and with those kids, you know, it's really important to grow their sight words, the words that they can read without having to sound them out. So there are things we can do even with those kids. But the vast, vast, vast majority of kids graduate from our program and they're fluent readers and good spellers.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, Daniela, how can people find you?

SPEAKER_01:

That is easy enough. We are KidsUp Reading Tutors. So all you have to do is type that into your browser, kidsupreadingtutors.com, and you will find us. Uh, and if you leave it as four separate words, you will end up in our Google business profile and you'll see lots and lots of wonderful reviews that parents have left for us. Otherwise, just go to our website, kidsupreadingtutors.com. There are buttons there that say schedule a call. And if you click on that, uh, you will end up on my calendar and we can be talking a few days later. So, yeah, super easy. Just reach out. That's that's the easiest way to do it. We're also on social media. You can find me through LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram and all these other things. But the easiest thing is probably just to go straight to uh uh just go straight to our website. Um you can read a whole bunch of information about who we are and what we do and how we do it right there on our website.

SPEAKER_00:

And where are you primarily located?

SPEAKER_01:

Ah, so we are an Arizona tutoring company. So we are located in Tucson, Arizona. Our tutors are all located in Tucson, Arizona. We do have a lot of students on the East Coast. So I raised my kids in the DC area. So when I was starting this up, the DC area is where I knew a lot of families, where I knew a lot of schools, where I knew testing psychologists who would refer students to us. And as a result of that, and because, you know, most things, or at least tutoring companies, grow by word of mouth, I'm gonna say the vast majority of the students we work with are in the DC area, but we are an Arizona company. Most of our tutors are located in Tucson, Arizona.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, thank you very much for being on here today, Daniela. Uh, I appreciate all that you do. You're doing amazing work and helping so many people so that they don't have to suffer through an education system. And as a therapist here, I'm also gonna thank you from that aspect as well, because you're helping them also with their mental health in that sense as well, not feel so bad, right? So and gaining their confidence in that area. And so thank you very much for being here. You're very much appreciated.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you, thank you, thank you for having me on, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk to other people. I'm uh always happy to talk to other folks and hope that the word about this spreads that we can help these kids and they can become fluent readers and good spellers. So, any opportunity to get that word out, um, I love it. So thank you, thank you for what you do.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, thank you very much. Everyone, please be sure to go to kidsupreadingtutors.com and reach out should you need help, or if you know anybody who needs services, please make sure to refer kidsup readingtutors.com. Thank you, thank you. Thank you.