OUR STORY
My name is Stapleton, and I am 10 years old. I have dyslexia.
But the problem is, no one knew for a very long time. I hid it from my parents and teachers.
Toward the end of first grade I cried a lot and never wanted to go to school because it was too hard. I didn’t know what was wrong with me and I was scared.
All I wanted to do was stay home with my family where I felt safe…
And we are his parents, Laken and Kent Gooch.
We spent many long years trying to help our son but saw each next “intervention” we attempted, fall short. We didn’t know what to do, his teachers didn’t know what to do, his school didn’t know what to do, and we felt like we were failing our son. He hated school and started “acting out” at such a young age, all because he wasn’t getting the literacy support he needed in order to learn to read.
So we embarked on a mission to figure out what he needed on our own. We spent thousands of dollars and exhausted all of the suggested resource options given to us, but nothing was working.
Then we learned about the Orton-Gillingham (OG) approach to literacy instruction
and began to understand why he was unable to succeed in the “traditional” way. The OG method provides direct, explicit, systematic, and sequential instruction that incorporates multi-sensory elements to effectively teach reading, writing and spelling. Since receiving OG-based reading instruction, Stapleton has made strides in his literacy understanding and has also started to regain some of his self-confidence.
We firmly believe every child should be given the best possible chance at learning how to read.
Simultaneously, we know parents and even teachers can be under-equipped with how to best identify and serve students who struggle with literacy.
We want to be a part of the solution!
So we created a comprehensive set of guided curriculum modules, based on the Orton-Gillingham method, for parents, teachers, tutors, etc. to use when working with struggling readers.
Our mission is to close the gap for struggling readers.
We want students to feel successful because they are taught to read in a way that meets them where they are and teaches them in the way they actually learn best. We want to be Dyfference Makers.