Reading & Learning Specialist | Special Education Teacher

Marcia D.

ADHD

I have extensive experience working with students with ADHD in both inclusive and special education settings, helping them develop the academic skills, confidence, and learning strategies needed for success. My instruction is carefully organized to reduce cognitive load, build meaningful understanding, and keep students actively engaged through clear, manageable steps that support attention and executive functioning. By identifying each student's strengths and learning barriers, I provide responsive, individualized instruction that promotes accuracy, fluency, self-monitoring, and increasing independence. My goal is to help students with ADHD recognize their abilities, overcome challenges, and experience lasting academic success through genuine understanding rather than memorization.

Dyslexia

As a retired special education teacher, I have seen many children, especially those with dyslexia, struggle to learn to read. Troubled by the lack of effective solutions and with 40% of third graders reading below grade level, I studied approaches extensively, drawing on my school and private practice experiences and reviewing published methodologies. ​My experiences reflect a nationwide problem: reading instruction is often fragmented, disconnected, and inconsistent. Most existing methods depend heavily on memorizing patterns and rules to apply and decode unfamiliar words. However, these practices do not foster the reading fluency necessary for strong comprehension. ​ When students with dyslexia are required to manipulate information mentally, their frontal lobes' working memory, organization, sequencing, and rapid automatic processing become overtaxed. Additionally, many current practices focus excessively on sensory activities, often wasting instructional time and contributing to growing concerns about widespread dislike of reading and children's insecurities. In response, I developed Read to Thrive's fully customized Learning to Read System. I designed my approach to rewire the neurodivergent dyslexic brain and enable confident, fluent reading. Through intentional, meticulous planning and supremely simplified, acutely personalized instruction, my System fosters new neural pathways by leveraging neuroplasticity and prioritizing sequential processing. ​Lessons are clear, consistent, and integrated. They are delivered with the greatest efficiency and in an engaging way to guide every child toward reading success. Each element connects to the broader System, fostering mastery and confidence to apply learning in new situations. From arrival to the final activity, every step empowers learners and leads to meaningful progress in just 6 to 10 weeks.​ ​Call today; don't wait. The opportunity for a thriving future for your child is just around the corner!

Elementary (K-6th)

Please delve into my approved subjects in phonics to grasp the urgency of the situation: a staggering 40% of students nationwide cannot read. I'll delve into another reason for this alarming issue in this space. Traditionally, students learned to read in kindergarten or first grade. That's no longer the case. Technology has rapidly evolved, creating a domino effect of issues impacting every aspect of life. Minds are constantly triggered and juggled, bombarded with connected and disconnected messaging, making focusing and processing nearly impossible. The Science of Reading's Structure Literacy mandate is clear and indisputable: reading instruction should be explicit, systematic, sequential, cumulative, and diagnostic. Past and current special education phonics programs adhere to this structural mandate, yet they continue to fail severely. Their inner workings are not interconnected, leading to a reduction of meaningless activities - technical jargon, vowel patterns, syllabication rules, and the excessive use of sand trays. These methods are understimulating and overwhelming and hinder students' ability to learn. The brain can concentrate on moving forward when it is free of clutter. It's time for a change. Recognizing that traditional approaches to reading instruction often mirror the confusion and chaos of today's culture, I have developed a new, bold, and fresh revolutionary approach, a 100% personalized learning-to-read system. This system is a welcome change from the norm. It is built on meaningful, comprehensive, and friendly student-centered concepts, making learning to read more efficient and enjoyable. With my system, all students, regardless of their learning needs, can build their skills meaningfully and efficiently, leading to natural applications in the classroom and beyond.

Homeschool

Parent involvement is not just a component, but the cornerstone of my system's success. It is a new, bold, and fresh revolutionary approach for learning to read, and your role in reinforcing your child's learning is invaluable. After a thorough initial informal reading assessment of your child's strengths and weaknesses, I will determine and share with you if my learning-to-read system is suitable. If you choose to hire me, I will present an overview presentation of my system, ensuring you feel confident and informed about your crucial role in your child's learning journey.  Following the initial presentation, parents are empowered with three flexible options for support. Whether it's a 60-minute consultation phone call, my attendance to support the planning and teaching, or my delivery of the lessons with parent reinforcement, you can choose what suits you best. Parents have reported appreciating my system's comprehensive flexibility and adaptability. They can teach it to their other children, which can be applied to all subjects and ages. For instance, the same reading strategies can be used for math or science content, and the system can be adjusted to cater to the needs of both younger and older children in a group setting. This adaptability ensures that the system is effective for all students, regardless of their learning needs or age.

Phonics

Over more than three decades, I developed a comprehensive phonics instruction system that simplifies the reading process while remaining fully aligned with the principles of Structured Literacy and the Science of Reading. Designed to reduce cognitive load and build meaningful connections between concepts, the approach helps students develop accurate decoding, fluency, confidence, and independent problem-solving rather than relying on guessing or memorization. It has been especially effective for students with dyslexia, ADHD, and other learning differences because instruction is explicit, systematic, diagnostic, and responsive to each learner's unique strengths and needs. My goal is to help every student discover that reading is understandable, achievable, and a foundation for lifelong learning.

Reading

I created and refined a clear, connected reading framework through decades of teaching experience. It organizes essential skills into manageable steps that can be adapted across ages and learning needs to strengthen understanding, confidence, and independent reading.

Special Needs

It's a matter of concern how Dyslexia is often defined as a learning disability. Dyslexic individuals, a significant 20% of the world's population, are not disabled; instead, they are neurodivergent, with a neurological wiring that's different from the majority—80% of the neurotypical population. Neurodivergent students, when provided with a learning environment that respects their unique neurological wiring in language processing, have the potential to excel as their neurotypical counterparts. This 'right approach' is a stark contrast that explains why traditional classroom or specialized reading and writing approaches of the past and currently practiced have consistently failed to meet the needs of neurodivergent learners and thinkers. It's a critical situation that underscores the urgent need to advocate for new, fresh, bold alternative approaches. I do not view Dyslexia as a disability. I embrace and advocate for students to work in an effective system that increases their classroom involvement practically and efficiently. Dyslexic students respond well to my 100% personalized learning-to-read system because of its supremely simplified, no-nonsense, common-sense, practical approach. They connect to its visual and creative appeal. It shines with meaningful, interconnected instruction that offers valuable understanding to seemingly senseless phonics! My learning-to-read system attracts "big picture" thinkers looking for meaningful connections in their learning. Dyslexic students use these features to their advantage while they compensate for their typical dyslexic challenges related to language processing, memory, and sequential tasks. Such approaches are designed and necessary to enable neurodivergent learners and thinkers to adapt to their classrooms and life experiences as quickly and efficiently as possible and to excel at what they typically do best: making connections, thinking intuitively and innovatively, sharing their strengths, and using their abilities.