I was raised in Little Rock and graduated from Hall High. I earned a Biology Degree and Juris Doctor, both from UALR.
My husband and I married in 1998 and moved to the Amboy community of North Little Rock. We have two sons: Jonathan is a junior music education major at UCA and Gabriel is a freshman at UAPB.
Why I Do What I Do
Relevant History
I have always been an avid reader. When my older son, Jonathan, was 4, he came to me and asked me to teach him how to read. At that time, I knew very little about that, but did what I knew, which was phonics. By the time he started kindergarten a year later, he was, and remained, a top reader in his class. I though, "Man, this teaching and parenting thing is easy!"
When my younger son, Gabriel, was 4, he put his hands on his hips and said, "I'm not going to learn my letters. I'm not going to count to 20. I'm not going to learn how to write my name." Well, okay then! What we didn't know then was that he had been showing early signs of dyslexia for at least two years.
If you knew Gabe when he was a little kid, he was the sweetest kid ever! He was a rule-follower, he never got in trouble, he never spoke up. When he was in the third grade we requested a conference to have him tested for dyslexia. It was one of the worst meetings I have ever attended, and it ended with the school district psychological examiner asking me, "You don't really want your child in special ed, now do you?" I told her that if I had what I wanted my child wouldn't be struggling and we wouldn't be having this meeting, so it was beyond what I wanted, and we should be talking about what he needed. He made it to the eighth grade before receiving a diagnosis, and another two years before the district decided they were going to follow the state dyslexia laws and not only provide him what he needed, but what they were legally obligated to do. It was countless hours of fighting and finally an OCR complaint that got us where we needed to be.
I do what I do so that you don't have to go through what our family, my child, went through. Whether your child has dyslexia, autism, dyscalculia, Down's Syndrome, dysgraphia, or any other challenge, they should all have access to a quality education. That access shouldn't be hindered by administrators. Gabe's teachers, with a couple of exceptions, were his greatest advocates, but they were often afraid to speak up for fear of retaliation by administration. I want to empower families and parents to truly act in the best interest of all the children.
