Tag: education system is flawed

We Are The Lucky Ones

On By Britani MartinIn The JourneyLeave a comment

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One day, when my children are older and can look back on their journey at The Morris Center, they will both believe this truth: WE ARE THE LUCKY ONES……

It’s true. They are the lucky ones, the lucky few. We’ve found a solution to their learning struggles and they’ve received the treatment necessary to rectify these weaknesses. Academically, the years ahead of them will now look different.  Instead of starting behind their peers, they can confidently line up beside them, capable of learning the same. They are the lucky ones.

But what about the other kids with learning disabilities?  The not-so-lucky ones?  You see, some of these others aren’t just unknown faces to me.  I know them.  I know their families. They are within my own extended family.   We’ve shared the same concerns and fears,  while encouraging and supporting each other along the way.  They’ve followed our journey here at The Morris Center and they’ve sincerely celebrated our progress.  Knowing they are cheering us on back home should make me feel good.  But in all honesty, it’s been a mixed bag.  With every encouraging comment, I feel a pang of sadness for them.  Not pity.  More like a touch of survivor’s guilt.  Why are my kids getting what they need, while their kids are facing another year of struggle and frustration?  I empathize with these parents who are ready to throw their hands in the air.  They are tired of seeing their kids struggle to keep up.  I would have to think it’s a double-edged sword for them to be happy for my kids while at the same time, wishing their own kids were having similar outcomes.  I’ve thought about each of those kids so much, wishing they could be here to receive this intervention.  They deserve it just as much as my kids do.  All kids do.

If the statistic is correct (1 in 5 with dyslexia), there’s a staggering number of kids out there struggling unnecessarily.  Take our school for example…. our district serves over 3,500 kids.  If dyslexia affects one in five people, that means 700 kids could have dyslexia.  700!  In one school district.  700 who will always have to work harder than  their peers and still might not close the gap of learning. It doesn’t have to be this way!!!  There’s a solution and it’s within reach.  My prayer as we return home is to see The Morris Center grow in recognition as a REAL solution for so many that struggle to read.  There are now 6 children within our district who have been to TMC, with more attending in the months ahead.  If these kids are all reaching higher potential than ever before, doesn’t TMC deserve a closer look?  I believe it does and feel a responsibility to other families to share our journey and to offer hope for those who feel hopeless.  To read more about why I believe The Morris Center program should be integrated into the education system, read my blog post Every Child Deserves It.

Cannon and Avery are now a few of the Lucky Ones.  But learning to read and reach your full learning potential shouldn’t be just for the “lucky ones.”  It should be for ALL.

Every Child Deserves It

On By Britani MartinIn The Journey1 Comment

If a child can't learnI’ve made it clear in past posts just how amazed I’ve been by the differences we’ve seen with my children & the children of friends thanks to The Morris Center. The NOW! (Neurodevelopment of Words) programs have changed their lives, and I am so grateful we made the sacrifice and took the leap to come here.  I know my kids’ futures are brighter and that they will leave here believing they are capable of so much more than they ever dreamed.  This place truly is a hidden gem that is changing lives for so many.  But, not enough lives.

My heart aches for the kids that aren’t receiving the level of intervention that we’ve had. I know quite a few families just at my school district that desperately wish they could follow in our footsteps and move to Ocala, Florida. People that want exactly what I want for my kids. They want their children to have the very best chance of finding success in learning.  They don’t like seeing their kids struggle and want to make learning easier for them.  They want to see their children grow in learning and gain confidence in their own abilities.  But as much as they want the very best for their kids, they simply cannot move to Florida.  They aren’t in the position to relocate temporarily.  Realistically, who is????  It’s absurd to hit pause on life at home and move to another state for a few months.  Who can do that?  We are one of the lucky few families (some probably would label us as ”extremists”) that have been able to do this, but I won’t say it was easy, financially or otherwise.  While I am happy my kids have been given this opportunity, I’m equally sad that so many others don’t have the same opportunity.  It’s not fair to them.  And, as a person that has witnessed first-hand how much this program is helping, it breaks my heart to know this program isn’t even an option for so many.

Why is that?  Why can’t other kids receive this level of intervention locally? Why did my kids have to uproot their lives, leave their dad & brother behind, miss their summer break and move half-way across the country to receive what all children deserve? It’s not right and it’s not fair.

So what’s the deal?  If this is “so life-changing,” why hasn’t every school in America jumped on the opportunity to provide this for their students?  I mean, this isn’t a new program.  This is not just a program that uses strategies related to the science of learning.  This is a program with CLINICAL RESEARCH. It’s has 25 years of evidence-based research to back it up! Seriously, you can see it all for yourselves. So why is it not stream-lined in our education system?

I have some thoughts….

Now, full disclosure….  I am in no way an expert in the field of education or learning. I have no intent to “bash” any other program or its’ methods.  I am just a mom wanting the best for my kids.   A mom who found a program that I believe in, with scientific data to back their claims of success.  I haven’t found that in any of the other programs I have researched.  And as I advocate for my own kids, I can’t help but want the same for others.

  1.  The Morris Center NOW! Program is hard to wrap your head around.  More specifically, the program is so involved on so many levels.  The intertwining of the  trans-disciplinary approach seems impossible to put into words without seeing it first-hand.  For this reason, I think it’s intimidating to the “decision-makers of education” to fully take on understanding the program completely.  You know, “it sounds too good to be true…”
  2. This program would be impossible to replicate in a school setting.  There is no way to offer what we are receiving here to an entire school.  For that reason, it would be easy to write off as “impossible.”  But hold on…..stay with me…..

Going back to my own kids.  Cannon is entering 7th grade and Avery, 4th grade.  They’ve been diagnosed with dyslexia for 3 years, but they’ve been dyslexic since birth.  They’ve both faced struggles with learning since the very beginning.  We first noticed something was wrong with Cannon in 1st grade.  He’s been receiving intervention since the Fall of 2nd grade.  Each of these programs cost the school money and the after-school tutoring cost us money. Now he struggles with anxiety, which required medication.  I’m hoping that life will look different for him when we get back home.  He won’t need the interventions and the anxiety will diminish as he finds learning to be less challenging.  It’s the start of 7th grade and his 8th year of school and we are just now getting to the place I wanted him to be from the beginning. Wouldn’t it have been nice for him not to have all these hardships from the beginning?  I wish we could have found The Morris Center earlier!

It bothers me that the NOW!  programs aren’t available everywhere and I’ve expressed this to Dr. Tim Conway multiple times.  Every time he just nods his head in agreement.  You see, he has tried for 30 years to get this into the education system with no success.  That must be so defeating.  Yet, he continues to pour into this program and his mission to help kids and adults who struggle with learning disabilities.  Through our conversations, I’ve learned about Dr. Conway’s own struggles with dyslexia.  He told me he was lucky to receive this program at the age of 4 so he didn’t have to struggle to learn.  WAIT A MINUTE!  Did he say 4?  How? And why didn’t we think of that???  (Had I known my kids were dyslexic at 4, I wouldn’t be writing this blog).

More discussions with Dr. Conway gave me more insight into his mission. Already, he’s offering the NOW! Programs online through e-tutoring.  This is just another way to offer help to more people across the world.  He’s in the process of helping launch a state-of-the-art clinic in Birmingham, Alabama at Alabama Game Changers.  This clinic will be able to provide services to more clients than TMC at once and will have a pre-k “classroom” to reach kids early, proactively.  Dr. Conway is proof that early intervention  works.  If the NOW! program was followed as part of the Pre-K curriculum, so many children could avoid the challenges of learning. If you go to the NOW! website you can read more about all of the programs.  Here’s what it says about the NOW! Foundations:

Students become conscious of the mouth actions that produce speech sounds. This awareness allows for the verification of sounds within words and enables individuals to become self-correcting in reading, spelling and speech.

Students use a multisensory and kinesthetic approach to sounds – not only do they discover how to produce sounds, but they are given several dimensions to express them. They will be able to make the sounds, describe how they made them, identify the sounds from a visual representation, and then organize sounds in a systematic way according to how the mouth produces them.

NOW! Foundations’ emphasis is not on conventional reading and spelling; students instead focus on feeling what the mouth is doing while making individual sounds. Students improve their phonological awareness and phonological processing skills by not only feeling the changes in the sounds of different words, but being able to generate them on their own.

My heart wants to burst when I think of the possibilities!   If schools implement this at the pre-k level, think of how many children will begin Kindergarten with the right foundations for learning. This program can be utilized by all students, not just those with learning disabilities.  Sure, some kids will still need interventions and additional services.  But there are quite a few that won’t. (Dyslexia has varying degrees of severity). These children won’t struggle to learn and will be better equipped to handle the normal challenges of school.  Their mental health would also benefit from this early intervention since so much of anxiety and depression can be linked to learning challenges. To me this is a win-win for all parties.   Schools want to see their students succeed. They want them to score well on standardized testing (don’t get me started on my opinions on testing).  They want to provide the best possible environment/curriculum for learning. Unfortunately, funding is a big deciding factor when it comes to this.  In the long-run, I would think the NOW! program would be well worth the investment for school districts.  Early detection and intervention has been proven to be ideal.  Identifying children early means better results.  Better results means less intervention over time, hence less money the education systems have to pay for interventional programs/services.  If the education systems want the very best for the future leaders of our country, they need to provide them with the best possible chance to learn at their full potential. My kids deserve it, your kids do too….. All kids deserve the very best.   The answer is here……..it’s time to take notice!

Wait a Minute! The Education System is Missing the Boat!

On By Britani MartinIn The JourneyLeave a comment

1I’ve spent a lot of time over the last week thinking about The Morris Center and the impact it has had on so many.  So many, yet not nearly enough.  It’s tragic when you think about it really.  Dyslexia affects 1 in 5 people.  Older generations of people may not even be aware that they have it.  They’ve probably always just thought, “school was hard for me.” Thankfully, with time and with science, we have a better understanding of how the brain works and how to recognize inefficiencies, then provide intervention for those learning challenges.  For dyslexia, there are countless intervention programs available.  State education departments and school districts are inundated with different programs claiming to be the best way to help kids with learning disabilities.  So how do they decide on one?  How do they choose one program over another?  I know that education is always evolving and new teaching strategies are important.  But, which one truly is the best?

When my kids were first diagnosed, I was overwhelmed. I didn’t have an education background so I was clueless about what my next step needed to be.  I was at the mercy of our school district (which I  love and must say is one of the very best in the state).  They went above and beyond to provide services and the latest programs for our children.  They did the very best they could with the resources they had available.  I won’t lie and say these programs haven’t helped my kids. They have.  But, there was still something missing.  What was it?  My kids were learning strategies and memorizing rules left and right.  But were they able to retain and apply what they were learning?   Was it making school easier for them?  And once done with the program, are they done for good or is this just going to be an on-going thing?  Will they start a new one when they are finished with this one?  And why are some kids doing one program and others doing another?  How do I know my children are in the best program for them?  Sooo many questions and it all left me a bit unsettled.  My focus started to shift from hoping this was helping school not be such a struggle to making sure their 504s listed every possible accommodation they may someday need.  I was resigned to the fact that they would always struggle and they would always have to work harder than the majority of their peers.  Life just isn’t fair sometimes.

My sister taught special education for 12 years and actually completed 2 years of an Orton-Gillingham program.  It was multi-sensory and supposed to be fantastic.  I never thought much about such programs until after it was a reality for my own children.  Now you have my attention…. With a family FULL of educators I’ve learned that the education system seems to have cycles.  Teaching methods, learning approaches, tools, techniques…….they have all evolved through the years.  We hear things like this:  They say the best way to teach phonics now is…. the best way to approach language is…. kids learn spelling most effectively through…..etc, etc.  Take math for example.  The way math was taught when I was a kid is certainly NOT how it’s taught today (just ask my kids!  They pretty much excused me from helping them with their homework. Thanks, but no thanks).  Some of the new methods are just that….new.  Others however, seem to have cycled back into use.  It’s all a bit confusing for this mom.  I mean, who are “they?” Who decides this?  Specifically with reading programs, who came up with the program?  How can they claim their method works best?  Isn’t that an opinion?  Is there scientific data that shows their specific program is in fact, the best?  And if so, why are there still so many options?  And the BIG question….will these programs help my kids reach their full potential?  So many questions.  The more I tried to understand our options, the more uncertain I became about the programs my children were immersed in.  It felt like the lottery.  It may or may not work.  Needless to say, my mama heart was not feeling very reassured.

And then I heard about The Morris Center.  I listened to my friends talk about the program and checked out the website.  My initial reaction? Too good to be true.  No way.  But then I read an article written by Dr. Tim Conway that made me second-guess all I thought I knew about dyslexia intervention.  The article had my attention when I read this:

“THIS is the SUPERPOWER of Dyslexia, as it is the SUPERPOWER of the human brain for all learning.

IF schools are required to use ONLY well-researched, highly-effective and scientifically proven methods instead of lining the pockets of publishers,

  • NOTE: publishers of curriculum have made hundred of millions of dollars in profit from selling our schools the same methods of instruction for reading that have the same ineffective, unproven, poorly researched and limited effectiveness, but a new packaging and new labels/vocabularly, for more than the past 20 years,

then from these new, well-researched, and scientifically proven new experiences we can expect NEW outcomes. Presently, the US educational system has shown little to NO improvement in the success of teaching reading, despite decades of discoveries in science about how the brain typically learns to read, what are the most likely causal factors for leading to dyslexia/poor reading skills (poor phonological awareness), and how some methods are highly-effective at preventing reading difficulties with evidence-based early intervention at age FIVE years old – YES, in Kindergarten we can already work to prevent the emergence of poor reading skills.”                                                               Read full article here: “What is Dyslexias Real Superpower”

Could the education system really be missing the boat?  Stay tuned for my next post that explains what The Morris Center actually is and why I think it’s really “THE BEST” program for dyslexia…..