Raise Grades and Confidence: Success Stories

Actually, most of the several hundred students my parents and I worked with in reading were success stories, and not because of any great genius on our parts. This isn’t brain surgery, after all. In fact, I’ve said time and time again that if schools did what we did, “flunking” would be rare.

However, these are some of the students that stand out in my mind from the past 10 years:

Sarah

My phone rang one day. When I answered, the woman on the other end told me that she was calling from her car. She had just picked up her 6th grade daughter at school and the girl was sitting next to her, sobbing, holding the report card she’d just gotten. “She got four Fs,” her mother said. “This is not a trouble-making child. She’s trying and she wants to do well. She’s a good girl.” They came in to see me the next day. My new student, Sarah, was completely cooperative as I administered the phonics test, but she had a look in her eyes that said, “I appreciate you trying, but it’s no use.” But after her first session, I saw a glimmer of hope in her eyes. Soon, she was coming in cheerfully, grabbing her binder and getting to work before I was even available. By the next report card after she started, her Fs had disappeared. The next six weeks period after that, she had Bs and Cs. The next, she was an honor roll student. “I plan to get all As, next time,” she told me confidently.

Several years later, her mom called to see if I was still available for tutoring. They had a neighbor kid who needed help. We chatted for a few minutes, then I asked about Sarah. “Oh, she’s an A student,” mom said matter-of-factly. “She has been since you taught her how to read.”

Derrik

This first-grader worried me more than almost any others I’d seen up until then. When he first came to me, he couldn’t even copy down a three-letter word that was written at the top of the same page. He also had almost no knowledge of letter sounds. I knew I couldn’t tackle that problem until he could see the words correctly. I referred him to someone who specializes in certain types of dyslexia. Normally, we worked with the children simultaneously and got great results, but I knew it was impossible this time. “Take the summer off from me and work on his eyes,” I told his mom. “Then bring him back in September and let me try again.” His mother took him for testing, and did exactly what she was supposed to in order to get his eyes working as a team. When he came back to me, we were in a whole new ball game. I started him on a step-by-step phonics program and the eye exercises he’d done enabled him to work at about 2/3rds the speed of other kids, which was a drastic improvement for him. Although I tutored him a few months longer than most kids, he and his mom were as determined as I was, and we got the results we were looking for. He’s now making good grades in high school.

Max

When Max’s mom brought him to me for testing, he’d stopped crying, but I could see the remnants of tears on his beautiful long eyelashes. He was guarded during testing, since he’d been through after school tutoring and special reading programs for awhile with no results. But after his first session, he was happy to come back. I think he could see immediately that he was getting the “secret code” he needed to be a good reader. After only a couple of weeks, his mom said, “I don’t know if it’s possible for this to work so fast, but his teacher said she already noticed a difference in his reading… and I hadn’t even told her we were doing this.” By this time, I wasn’t surprised by the comment. Once children get the idea that they’re supposed to read all the way through a word, that’s about 25% of the battle. And, the added self-confidence they gain in tutoring sessions (where they’re set up to succeed instead of fail) often gives them a renewed enthusiasm for reading. Like most kids, Max found that phonetic reading allowed him a much greater chance of success in school. Within a few months, it was as if he had never had a reading problem at all.

Mom Comments:

“Clare has a B+ after only a few weeks. She had a D before.”

“Eric made a 90 on his language arts grade. When can I bring his brother in?”

“Derrik’s in 9th grade and just made four A’s on his report card. The time and effort you put in when he was struggling in elementary school has paid off.”

“Sarah’s improved across the board. In several classes, she’s gone up a letter grade each six weeks since she started with you.”

Notes: