Illuminating Dyslexia

Colleen began her teaching career in Tucson after graduating with her Masters degree in Special Education—Deaf Education from The University of Arizona (1999).  She earned her Bachelors of Science degree from Brigham Young University in Family Sciences—Early Childhood Education and Elementary Education (1996).   Colleen has homeschooled her children for over 15 years with her oldest graduating high school (homeschooled K-12) and two children who have dyslexia.  Colleen is passionate about learning and teaching, especially reading, writing and math!  Reading is often the gateway to limitless experiences and knowledge.  However, when reading is a struggle and becomes burdensome it can become the gatekeeper, limiting access to new world views, life experiences, and knowledge.  Colleen has had experience teaching reading and writing at the K-12 level through adult at the college level.  Her approach to writing instruction incorporates her training in The 6 Traits of Writing and Institute in Excellence in Writing (IEW).  She believes the focus should be first on ideas/content, sentence structure, vocabulary, and organization before tackling grammatical conventions--without ideas/content, there's nothing to edit.  With her special education background, she is able to review current special education reports & IEPs and/or task analyze areas of need, create individualized benchmarks to implement needed strategies and instruction for all students, whether receiving special education services or not.