I am incredibly excited to launch Project 1 in 5’s first ever blog. This one is a doozy, but it gives great insight into the world of a dyslexia parent turned private tutor. Future blogs will contain information that is helpful for both parents and teachers, as well as glimpses into the founder’s life as a dyslexia mom herself…
Ever since I was a kid, I knew I wanted to be a teacher, even when my family thought I should be a lawyer for all the arguing and debating I did… but that’s not where my heart was. I don’t know how I knew I wanted to teach, but it was engrained in me, and I just knew. Perhaps it was my 5th Grade teacher, Mrs. Barker, or my 7th Grade math teacher Ms. Tapoozian, or my senior year math teacher Mr. Swift… or maybe it was all of them… all of the teachers that added something to my life… hope, knowledge, and the belief that I could be and do anything, as long as I put in the work and effort. In their love of teaching, and their love for students, they inspired me to want to by just like them, changing the world, one student at a time.
So, one would have thought I’d be teaching forever… That I’d be that wrinkly old teacher educating the children and grandchildren of her former students, but that all changed when my second child started school.
My son had gone through kindergarten without a hitch, even reading short chapter books by the end of the year. I thought the strong phonics-based reading program our school was using was amazing and worked miracles. I thought every child should use this system, and then they’d all be great readers, and no one would have reading difficulties… Boy was I wrong…
When my daughter started kindergarten two years after my son, I was excited for her to have the same teacher and the same results my son had. But as the days went on, I realized how different my daughter was from my son… I know we shouldn’t compare, but all of us parents know, that with certain things, we do. We just can’t help it… Unlike my son, my daughter took hours to complete her homework, in KINDERGARTEN! We’d sit down to work on her phonograms and then her spelling words, and it would be a constant fight, a struggle, and we’d both end the time with tears, frustration, and honestly wanting to strangle each other. I was beginning to understand what some of my fourth-grade parents had been talking about. It took me to be in their shoes, for me to understand the truth about the homework struggle. We spent so much time trying to work on my daughter’s phonograms and spelling, that we rarely got to the “reading” part of homework.
I discussed the difficulties with my daughter’s teacher, my trusted colleague. She told us to read for spelling and read for reading more. (I understood this jargon, because I had been trained in the program the kids were using). It made sense… sort of… except nothing improved.
Towards the end of the year, my daughter still couldn’t read, and she definitely couldn’t spell. I finally gave up the homework fights, after one night during fourth quarter, when we were trying to read the lowest level of one of the printed paper books, that the teacher had assigned. I finally lost it… I couldn’t tell you what the story was about, but I can still feel the anger and frustration that built up inside me when my daughter could not remember the darn duck’s name from page to page… I mean, come on… The name was on EVERY page, and I told her EVERY time! How could she not remember! Ugh.
I resolved to work with my daughter over the summer when we had more time, since I had the summer off with her. But, lo and behold, I tried every trick up my sleeve, every tool in my toolbox, every strategy in my repertoire, and she made minimal, if almost non-existent progress with her reading and spelling. I am a teacher for crying out loud! How can I not teach my own child to read?! Should I even be teaching other people’s kids? How could none of it work? I have a master’s degree in education for goodness sake! …and yet, I couldn’t help my own child…
…and when everything I knew failed to work, I began to look into alternatives… There had to be more going on that I wasn’t aware of. I don’t know what exactly made dyslexia pop into my head, but perhaps it was the adding of consonants that weren’t there, mixing up the order of letters, the awkward way certain phrases came out of her mouth, but I began to look into the possibility. I didn’t know much about dyslexia at the time, other than the fact that people switch their b’s and d’s quite often, and that they struggled with reading and spelling. I talked to the teachers in our special education department, at the beginning of the next school year, to seek advice. The first two things they told me, were not what I wanted to hear… First, they said the school does not test for dyslexia, nor is it necessarily a qualification for my daughter to receive special education services… Secondly, they told me that because of my daughter’s current grades, she was getting A’s and B’s, that they wouldn’t even consider her a candidate for testing. I was intrigued… How could my non-reading, terrible-spelling daughter be getting A’s and B’s? When I investigated, I found out that not only were the weekly stories being read aloud to the entire class, but so were the tests! Everything was being given orally… It made sense… and of course, the high grades on spelling were from our hours of studying during the week. If you asked her to spell those same words the following week, or even in context, forget it. She memorized for the test, and then the words were gone.
I finally decided to seek outside help. I turned to a psychologist friend of mine, and asked her to just watch my daughter read, and let me know if I should be concerned, or if I was just the crazy teacher-parent with too high expectations. She told me immediately that there were some definite flags, and that it would be beneficial to have my daughter tested. I decided to have her go through the whole gamut. If there was anything going on, I wanted to know everything so that I could get her the help she needed. Knowledge is power, right? I scheduled an appointment with another psychologist so that there would be no bias, and I waited on pins and needles for the test day, and more importantly, for the results. (Not that I wanted anything “wrong” with my child, but I wanted answers, either way, so that I could figure out how to proceed.)
Sure enough, the psychologist said, that without a doubt, my little girl has dyslexia. It was honestly a relief! There was a reason WHY nothing I did helped. There was a reason WHY my daughter was struggling. She wasn’t lazy, or trying to get out of the work. Her brain was actually processing things differently! Along with her dyslexia diagnosis, came an ADHD diagnosis, which I was honestly not too surprised about. We had always joked that my daughter was the Energizer Bunny, but it wasn’t affecting her life too much, so it wasn’t a huge concern. It was the dyslexia truly holding my daughter back from being able to read and spell. What DID surprise me, however, was that my daughter also came up gifted. I learned a new term that day… My daughter is Twice Exceptional… This basically means that she’s gifted in one area, but has difficulty in another. That seemed to describe her pretty well. I realized then, that if I could help my daughter with her dyslexia, then she could truly soar and expand her giftedness.
So, what was I supposed to do with all of this information? My daughter has dyslexia… what now? I was referred to a private tutoring company that specialized in dyslexia. I sat down with the owner and she shared about a program called the Barton Reading and Spelling System. That didn’t mean much to me at the time, neither did the Orton-Gillingham and multi-sensory approach terms that were shared with me. What struck home for me, was the demonstration of how it all worked. In the brief few minutes of the demo, a question I had always had, was answered… In fact, it was a question my fourth-grade students had even asked me before, and I never had an answer, other than, “It’s just that way.” (Although I have always been a great reader and speller, I couldn’t tell you why letters make a certain sound, or why words are spelled the way they are.) …but in that moment, I learned when to use a “c” versus a “k,” and WHY!
I knew, in my heart of hearts, that this program would work for my daughter. The challenge was figuring out how this single mom, living off of a teacher’s salary, would be able to afford private tutoring twice a week… But, we all know, a momma will do, what a momma has got to do, and I was determined to find a way.
I began expanding my side income, through a health and wellness network marketing company. The funds I earned from helping people get healthier, I used to help my daughter learn to read and spell…
I remember the first day I caught my daughter reading on her own. She was reading a science article of all things, from the internet. I grabbed my camera and stealthily took a video. I was in tears watching this victory unfold before my very eyes. My baby girl could read! She wasn’t perfect, and there was still a lot of work to do, but I had hope, and I knew, that my daughter would not only be a successful reader, but that she would never be held back by her dyslexia again
I began to see the giftings she has been given, and we’ve been able to embrace her talents. She has an incredible heart, and she has a passion for animals, crafting, and anything related to the arts. She may have certain struggles, but she definitely has her strengths, and her incredible personality and belief in herself has been able to shine through over the last couple of years. She has even been able to attend a gifted school, which has been incredible for her. She is able to get the accommodations she needs to help with her dyslexia, while at the same time, she is able to explore her giftedness…
So how does a teacher, who has always been a teacher, leave a career she thought she’d be in forever? Simple… There are more “Hayden’s” out there… 1 in 5, in fact. As I began to learn more and more about dyslexia, my frustration grew with the inadequacies of training for teachers to work with these kids, the inadequacies of the education system to properly service these kids, and I couldn’t sit by another year, being able to peg kids in my class as having dyslexia, but not being “allowed” to say anything to their parents about it! The frustration was too much and I needed out.
To be honest, I sort of wrote off teaching altogether at that point. Yes it was in my heart, but I was bitter, and I was tired. I had been doing well in the health and wellness industry, and I honestly thought that was where I would be headed. I thought it would be a means to be able to do more mission work, and to serve in other ways. A mentor of mine asked me, “When will you just trust God?” At that moment, I knew I had to leave teaching, take a leap of faith, and pursue the health and wellness gig. To survive financially, I took a part time dyslexia tutoring position at the same place my daughter had received her tutoring. Little did I know, that not only would I fall in love with the Barton Reading and Spelling System, but I fell in love with the kids I was working with. They reminded me so much of my daughter, and their personalities kept a giant smile on my face. More importantly, I was actually able to see these kids make huge gains, in such a short amount of time. Kids that weren’t reading at all, were reading within a couple of months, if that.
After about seven or eight months of pursuing the health and wellness industry full time, and the tutoring part time, God had other plans for me… He let me try things my own way for awhile, but revealed to me that I needed to branch out on my own completely, having the health and wellness thing as a hobby, and putting tutoring on the forefront, full time, as a private, independent tutor. He wanted me to start my own dyslexia tutoring company… I took another leap of faith, and as only God can orchestrate, everything fell into place, and Project 1 in 5 Dyslexia Tutoring LLC was born...
I now get to experience all of the incredible parts of teaching, watching kids gain confidence and independence in their abilities, without all of the politics of the classroom. I get to help kids in ways I was never able to before… I get to help them in the unique ways that they learn, and not in the one-size-fits-all model. I get to enjoy the relationships we’re developing, and share in the excitement and joy that these kids bring each day. Even better, I get to expand and help more and more kids and families just like my own… That dream I had as a young girl has become more true than I ever thought possible… I really do get to change the world one student at a time.
Nicole Cumbo
Founder, Project 1 in 5 Dyslexia Tutoring