Kathy went back to school for her masters degree in special education after adopting Lynda; a child with autism and rather a rather severe seizure disorder. She is a National Board Certified Teacher (NBCT) since 2006 in the area of Exceptional Student Education (early childhood to young adult).
She has 80 hours of dyslexia therapy training from the Academy of Orton-Gillingham Practitioners and Educators qualifying her as a level one academic language therapist. Her experience teaching reading to her Pre-K disabilities classes fired her passion to get to every struggling reader in special education as early as possible. Early intervention often changes these students' whole destiny from questionable to remarkable.
In 2012, she completed a graduate program in applied behavior analysis (ABA) and 1,000 hours of supervised practicum hours in ABA to qualify to sit for the exam to become a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA). She is one of about two dozen Board Certified Behavior Analysts in our state earning her BCBA in 2012.
Russ came to special education very indirectly. While a businessman working with scouts and church, Kathy kept putting her special needs kids in Russ' groups at Cub Scout Day Camp. When a career change was obviously on the horizon, Kathy suggested he would make a good special education teacher since he had spent so many years including them in events like summer day camps, camp outs and Sunday school classes. With Kathy's tutoring, Russ passed the alternate certification tests and was employed in Florida teaching special education for pre-school students with severe/profound disabilities and later at the high school level. In 2005 Russ spent a very busy year completing a Master of Education in Educational Leadership in 12 months. In 2013, he had an opportunity to earn a second Master of Education in Dyslexia Therapy from Mississippi College. He sat for the Certified Academic Language Therapist (CALT) and become the first male in the state to hold those credentials. Russ is passionate about teaching children to read and has experienced tremendous success with the Alphabetic Phonics program based on Orton-Gillingham's original research.
Enough about education and our passions for children with autism and dyslexia. What really counts is that we are the parents of five adult children and have seven amazing grandchildren! Oh, and three sweet little dogs. We are truly blessed to do what we love and to love what we do! And, it is awesome to be able to work side by side teaching children with special needs from in kindergarten, first and second grades. Collaboration at its best.
Stop by often. We're glad you did this time!
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