We Teach Children with Disabilities How to Read

"Tina is an exceptionally skilled professional to work with. Her ability to identify children’s barriers to reading and contrive an individualized intervention plan is phenomenal. She is patient, kind, and thoughtful in all interactions. Tina consults and collaborates with other providers to ensure intervention is consistent across people and settings. I am an aspiring BCBA and work directly with Tina to minimize problem behaviors, maximize learning opportunities, and ensure our mutual client gets the most out of her sessions. The amount of progress our client has made in the last month is astounding. There truly is no other comprehensive service available that matches the quality of intervention services offered by Tina. I highly recommend Tina’s services for any child struggling with language processing, oral language expression, reading, written expression, and comprehension." -H.G.

"Before coming to The Reading Therapy Center, I had tried three different reading programs with my 8-year-old son; unfortunately, he showed very little progression. He was still struggling to remember several of the letter names and sounds, and would get extremely frustrated trying to sound out CVC words. He also struggled with letter formation and would get angry and give up very easily. I was concerned that my son had dyslexia and was not getting the specialized help that he required. After a friend recommended Miss Tina, knowing my son’s reading struggles, we decided to give her a try... and let me just say that Miss Tina did not disappoint!

From the very first day, Miss Tina has been extremely patient with my son - who has Sensory Processing Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and can, at times, be very difficult to motivate. She is nothing but respectful, kind, and loving even in the trying moments with my son. I am so impressed that she is so patient, yet firm, and can get results from him when most people cannot. Seriously, she’s better than Mary Poppins.  Miss Tina also collaborated with me to develop a multisensory curriculum that is tailored to my son’s needs. This has made our homeschooling experience so much more fun and successful. 

Within the first four weeks of my son’s time with Miss Tina, I could see progress in the areas of sight and sound recognition as well as letter formation. But most importantly, his attitude started to change from frustration to confidence and eventually reading enjoyment - something he had never experienced before coming to The Reading Therapy Center.  I am overjoyed with the progress and confidence that my son has gained over the past six weeks. I know it will only continue. 

For the first time, my son enjoys being read to and - just this week! -  he read his first book fluently and with a smile on his face. I am one satisfied momma; thank you, Miss Tina!" -M.M. 

"Our 12-year old son needed assistance with improving his grades in Language Arts due to his dysgraphia. Our son was initially reluctant to go to the Reading Therapy Center; however, Miss Tina quickly gained his trust and won him over, so he enthusiastically works with her and their sessions are productive. He was struggling with writing about what he read, completing essay style questions, and elaborating on what he knows in written form. Miss Tina has provided our son with a range of strategies, tools, and worked with him to practice these skills to improve his reading and writing. Miss Tina has worked with him on specific writing projects breaking up his writing work into manageable sections and working to draw the reader in, elaborate on the subject and conclude the work. We can see how Miss Tina can confidently work with a range of ages and how she establishes accountability for everyone involved so the shared goal of improving reading and writing for your son or daughter is achieved. Miss Tina has even worked with our son’s school by providing a concise summary of his reading and writing needs and how they can be more accommodating to allow for extra time if needed or leverage technologies like, a laptop, speech to text, or Grammarly. The goal is to ensure his assignments are reflective of what he has learned and understood. Writing is a fundamental aspect of communication and our son is better prepared for his future school and professional life thanks to Miss Tina." -E.W.

"My 10 year old son's neuropsychologist recommended the Reading Therapy Center of Southern Arizona because he was falling behind in reading, spelling, and grammar at school, even though he has additional resources and interventions there. My son was also getting teased by his classmates every time he had to read aloud or they pass around their spelling test to be graded by their peers. My son is shy to begin with and this teasing crushed his confidence and his desire to go to school.

After a few months of working with Miss Tina, my son was starting to smile again. His resource teacher said his scores were starting to go up but she wasn’t sure why. That’s when I told her that we had been going to the Reading Therapy Center. My son is now able to sound out words, break words down, and understand their meaning. He is asking the meaning of words, how to pronounce words, and asking to read more complex books. Before, he couldn’t have cared less.

Miss Tina knows how to engage my son no matter how tired, lazy, or unwilling he is that day. She knows all the tricks and has fun and interesting games to play. He doesn’t even know that he is learning! She is easy to understand, energetic, and so upbeat. She has even shown him how to brain storm and format paragraphs and to write reports.

I cannot recommend the Reading Therapy Center or Miss Tina enough. Not only has she helped my son academically, she has helped him mentally and socially." -K.R.

"I brought my 10 year son, who has an autism diagnosis, to the Reading Therapy Center of Southern Arizona that was recommended to me by his Pediatrician.  Around 4th grade, we noticed him struggling not only in language arts, but in science, social studies and math as well. Reading comprehension (including main idea, inferencing, author’s purpose) and writing are his struggles. These are fundamental skills that, as he moves up in grade, will be more challenging.  Ms. Tina makes reading fun, and my son enjoys coming to see her.  She listens to our concerns and is a wonderful advocate for our child.  After only a few months of therapy, we have seen a dramatic improvement!" -H.A. 

"My daughter has a visual processing disorder due to optic nerve damage. We have had some results with different types of therapy and tutoring but none as noticeable as with Ms. Tina. She has made something my daughter dreaded exciting and fun. She is great with my shy child that now laughs and jokes while they are working. Her writing improved so much over the summer that her teachers have already noticed the difference in vocabulary use and writing style in the first three weeks of school. Finding someone that has helped my daughter make so much progress and is enjoyable to work with has been such a relief. I am excited to see how far they can go this school year. If your child struggles with reading or writing I would highly recommend a visit with Ms. Tina." -S.W.

“My daughter has struggled with learning the skills to read for the many years she has been in school, starting from when she was 3 years old as a global developmentally delayed child. Of course those early years were intended to set the groundwork for success in school and not a focus directly on reading. It is my opinion that the foundation just didn’t get anchored for her, because in the 2nd grade she was still not able to read and the school wanted to hold her back from going to the third grade. For me holding her back was not the answer as I felt it was going to be repeating what hadn’t worked up to that point in time. 

Fast forward to finding Miss Tina and the Reading Therapy Center of Southern Arizona. My dear little one, now 9 years old, doesn’t capture concepts easily. Only with repetition ad nauseum will something she is attempting to learn finally get set in her brain. And it is important to note that she can lose something she has learned if reminders and repetition don’t continue.  This is where Miss Tina shines in her approach. Repetition has been a large part of how she engages my daughter. With what result?  It is delightful to see my daughter’s excitement in playing a word game or capturing what Miss Tina calls the jail words because they don’t follow the rules for sounding them out. She is beginning to take an interest in books again in the home setting, where for a very long time it was all about the pictures and less about the story. And it’s especially great to see her able to read simple books that have word families in them and to feel successful at it, without struggling so very hard to get through even one sentence. Smiling about reading comes more easily now rather than trying everything she can to avoid it.

It is apparent to me that getting to know how my little one thinks and learns has been instrumental in this evolving success. It was particularly insightful for Miss Tina to engage with my daughter’s long time speech therapist.  To understand where my daughter’s capacity for receptive and expressive language was and the fact that positional language (under, next to, behind, in front) was still developing as well as to see how more than two-step instructions can overwhelm her made a big difference in modifying how Miss Tina better engaged with and expected responses. I believe that making time to talk with other providers in my daughter’s support team facilitated greater understanding of how my little one learns. It was smart business on Miss Tina’s part to engage with the other professionals in our lives as she sees occupational, physical and speech therapists every single week and their insights reduced the time to learn where my daughter is and how she could best amplify the process of learning to read.

It is a pleasure to work with Miss Tina. I have found her to have a bright personality, open and caring. She is upbeat and supportive of our family’s schedule and the needs we have as we have integrated yet another appointment into an already busy life.

I have no doubt that the excellent teaching methods Miss Tina employs coupled with her “you can do this!” attitude and rewarding the small successes at the beginning of her sessions made it so that my daughter looked forward to her reading sessions, even though this is and has been incredibly difficult for her. Miss Tina has a wealth of materials that she adapts for my daughter’s needs, such as games, charts, word families etc. And because she keeps excellent records as to what has been is learned during each session, she effectively builds on skills each time they meet.

I am very happy that our physical therapist recommended Miss Tina and the Reading Therapy Center of Southern Arizona to me. Reading is fundamental to our children’s success all throughout their lives. I am finally able to see that my daughter, with the work she is investing to learn will, eventually, read at grade level!” -L.C.

"Miss Tina definitely has a big heart and a ton of dedication for my 10 year old son, who has autism. When she works with him, she knows how to engage him in a calm and fun manner. I have never seen him this chill when someone has come to work with him in the past. Miss Tina makes learning - and especially reading - fun for him. Not only that, she has gone "the extra mile" by driving to all of my son's therapists (as well as to his school)  so that she gets to know him better and all the ways to help him fully. She took the time and dedication to do this without me even suggesting it! We are blessed to have been guided to Miss Tina; she is a great addition to my son's team of helpers and educators." - S.L.

"The Reading Therapy Center is such a blessing to our family. I wish I would've heard of Miss Tina sooner! I would highly recommend anyone with any reading needs to give it a try - it is absolutely life changing. Thank you RTC!" - A.F.

"We appreciate Miss Tina's efforts to understand our son (who has dyslexia and apraxia) as a whole child. She communicates effectively and is willing to work with our school. She also creates a family-friendly environment so that even our other child loves coming to visit her. It is obvious that Miss Tina puts a lot of effort into making reading instruction fun For instance, she uses many multi-sensory activities like hopscotch-the-vowels, fingers-in-shaving cream, and playing fun sight-word games. Her personality and character are just part of the reason she is so successful as a tutor. She is respectful, kind, professional, and knowledgeable." - W.F.

"I want to keep going to see Ms. Tina because she helps make school easier." - 3rd grader with dyslexia