What is the EmpowerED promise?

We strongly believe that every family should have access support and quality education, regardless of their financial situation. To help make this a reality, we offer two ways to support our mission:

1- We provide our services at a reduced rate for families who need financial assistance. This allows us to extend our reach and ensure that more students benefit from our services.

2-If you are in a position to give back, consider contributing to our scholarship fund. Your generous donations help cover the costs for families who may otherwise be unable to afford our services.

By participating in this initiative, you play a crucial role in reducing the educational equity gap and ensuring that all students have the opportunity to succeed.

What does an Orton Gillingham tutoring session look like?

Tutoring sessions are tailored to a student’s individual needs. The first session involves a little get to know each other activity followed by a baseline assessment that tests a child’s current level of phonemic awareness and decoding. From there, we create a structured plan that follows a specific scope and sequence according to the data determined by the baseline assessment. Each session, your child will review previously learned phonics skills to enhance retention, learn a new phoneme or spelling rule, and then have the opportunity to practice applying these skills through individual and shared reading and writing activities. We will incorporate the use of multi-sensory exercises such as movement and tactile materials such as sand, play-doh, crayons, connecting cubes, or magnetic letters.

What does an Orton Gillingham group class look like?

In a small group class, parents can expect their children to engage in a variety of multi-sensory exercises to practice and reinforce reading and spelling skills such as decoding and encoding, segmenting, and blending. The phonemic instruction will depend on the needs of the group which will be determined by informal assessments conducted during the first session. We will incorporate review of previously learned concepts in addition to instruction for new concepts, as well as application and practice of both.

How do I know what kind of help I need with the 504/ IEP process?

Honestly, unless you’re an educator (and even if you are), you may not know what kind of help you need. The reality is, from the time a child begins to show signs of a specific need and/or receives an initial diagnosis, most caregivers’ heads begin to spin. We always want to do what’s best, but we don’t always know what that is or how to get there. Who do I contact? What do I say? What don’t I say? What are my rights? Do I follow up? With who? Do I request a 504? Does my child need to be evaluated by the school? What does an IEP meeting look like? What is my role on the IEP team? Should I sign this IEP? What should I look for? And the list goes on…and on.

No matter where you are in this process, we are here to guide and support you.