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www.FredericksburgParent.NET 13 This makes us different from, say, a psychologist, where you might go to get a diagnosis of dyslexia or ADHD, or the school counselor, who will evaluate a student's eligibility for accommodations or special services. We are here to identify what is breaking down and use targeted brain-training strategies to improve it. Q: Why are you passionate about this approach? It goes back to my career as a public-school special education teacher. One of the things that really broke my heart was that in order to accommodate chil- dren who were struggling, we would do things like read test questions to them so that they could pass and move to the next grade. This is done with the best of intentions, but at the end of the day, that child did not learn to read and is no better equipped to succeed the next year. Whereas the schools accommodate and modify the activities for the student, we are trying to fix what is causing the problem in the first place. If memory is the issue, we work to strengthen memory and then work on comprehension. We are trying to correct the problem, not just treat the symptom. If the stu- dent can't read, we aren't just reading the material to them. We are identifying the specific breakdown that is interfering with their ability to read and work- ing to improve that area. That is the most important thing that distinguishes us from a typical tutoring center. Q: What do your coaching sessions look like? All of our sessions are one-on-one. This is different from what you may see advertised as "individualized" tutoring at some of the national tutoring cen- ters. We don't individualize things by giving children a different packet of worksheets from everyone else. That is not the kind of work we do. These are one-on-one sessions where our learning specialists are working with a child to improve a specific skill. This skill-based work is essential if the child is then going to succeed in the academic work. We usually want to see students twice a week, and we re-evaluate after every 20 hours of coaching, because we tend to see improvements quickly, so we constantly adjust our program to reflect their level. To give you an example PYRAMID OF SKILLS of the kind of progress we can see, we had one student who came to us, a sixth grader who had been diagnosed with dyslexia and was on a second-grade read- ing level. After seeing her for 20 sessions over the course of one semester, this student was up to a fifth-grade reading level. Another student with us went from a first- to a fourth-grade reading level in a similar period of time. While everyone will progress at a different speed, it is not unusual for us to see growth like this with the methods we are using. We provide a lot of support for our fami- lies, and we do ask parents to sit in on the first few sessions, because we want to train them to be able to work with their child at home. Continuing that work at home really helps the child progress faster—meaning you will ultimately need to pay for fewer coaching sessions. Q: What kind of student is a good fit for Learning Enhancement Centers? Anybody who is struggling in school, and there's no apparent explanation for why. It's that parental gut feeling we get when it's clear that something more is going on. It's those situations that don't make sense, where a child is falling behind, but other indicators show that they have the intelligence where this should not be happening. Parents can call the center and speak with me, and I can usually talk through with them whether they are a good fit for us, or whether another prac- titioner or therapist would be a better route to pursue. We are not a place to go for a specific medical diagnosis, and we are also not a solution for addressing behavioral challenges. To learn more, visit learningenhancement- centers.com, or call 540-412-0992 to talk about whether your child should be seen for an evaluation.