Expert 1:1 instruction and coaching to:
identify where and why your child is getting stuck,
then build the specific skills and strategies your child needs to read, learn, study, and manage school with greater ease,
so your child can take increasing responsibility,
and you can spend less time teaching, reminding, monitoring, and worrying.
I don't start with a program. I start with discovery.
I want to understand how your child approaches a task—not just whether the answer is right or wrong. What gets noticed? What gets missed? What happens when the work becomes difficult? What changes when I teach something differently?
That might mean listening closely as a young student reads and spells, changing one part of a task to see what happens, or reviewing assessment results to understand where skills have broken down. With an older student, it might mean opening Google classroom together, looking at ten missing assignments, and figuring out why the system the student says is working... isn't.
I teach, observe, question, adjust, and teach again.
That ongoing discovery shapes the instruction: a systematic plan grounded in sound methodology, but continually refined by what the student shows me. And I bring the student into that process. Students learn to notice their own patterns, understand how they learn, recognize when something isn't working, and discover what they can do differently.
The goal isn't simply to make school easier. It's to make the student more capable.
Areas of Focus
Reading, Math, & Learning
When the basics aren't becoming automatic.
Targeted instruction in reading, spelling, writing, and math—identifying gaps, building missing skills, and giving students the tools to tackle increasingly difficult work without guessing or avoiding it.
Academic & Learning Assessment
When you need more information—not necessarily a diagnosis. Sometimes families want a clearer picture of a student's academic strengths and weaknesses without pursuing a comprehensive neuropsychological evaluation. Individualized assessment can provide objective information about current skills, identify patterns of strength and difficulty, and show how a student's performance compares with that of same-age or same-grade peers.
Academic Coaching
When “I’ve got it” keeps turning into missing work, last-minute studying, and disappointing grades.
Students learn practical systems for planning, organization, time management, note-taking, writing, and studying—and practice using those systems with their actual schoolwork until they can manage more of it themselves.
Learning Independence
Learning how to figure out what works—and what to do when it doesn't.
Students become more aware of how they learn, what gets in their way, and which strategies actually work for them—so they can make better decisions, solve problems, advocate for themselves, and rely less on adults to manage the learning process.
Meet Sally
For more than twenty years, I've worked with students who are capable of learning—but for one reason or another, learning isn't going as it should.
Sometimes they are young students struggling to read, spell, or understand math. Sometimes they are teenagers with ten missing assignments who insists they have perfectly good systems. And sometimes they are capable students who work hard, study for hours, and still aren’t getting the results they expect.
My expertise is figuring out what is happening beneath the struggle.
I don't simply match a student to a program or teach a predetermined set of strategies. I watch students work. I listen to their errors. I ask questions. I change something and see what happens. I review assessments when they're available, create individualized materials when they're needed, and draw on more than two decades of experience to decide what to try next.
And I bring students into that discovery process.
Even young students can begin to understand how they learn—what they notice, what they miss, what gets them stuck, and what they can do differently. As students get older, that same awareness becomes the foundation for studying effectively, managing their workload, solving problems, advocating for themselves, and taking greater responsibility for their education.
I adore working with my students. But from the beginning, my goal is that they eventually become my students no longer.
What Families Are Saying
Many of the learners I’ve worked with faced significant learning challenges.
During or after our work together, many families have reached out to share where life has taken their children.
Confidence
“She was accepted to both NYU and Sarah Lawrence and is now thriving in New York. While we're incredibly proud of those accomplishments, we're even more grateful for the confidence she gained along the way. There was a time when she could have lost confidence in herself as someone with worthwhile ideas in an academic environment, but you helped her weather that storm and come through trusting and believing in herself. Thank you for helping her in so many ways over the years.” (— Parent of a former student)
Hope
"I still remember when he struggled just to read and keep up in school. Today he knows he is a capable student with a bright future ahead of him academically and athletically. Your expert guidance and calm demeanor gave him the boost he needed when he was so discouraged by learning. There is clearly light at the end of the tunnel." (— Parent of a former student)
Growth
"You remain an integral part of who our daughter has become—a dedicated, flourishing, confident young woman. We are incredibly grateful for the role you played in helping her grow into the person she is today." (— Parent of a former student)
Whether you're seeking support for yourself or your student, I'd be happy to learn more about your goals, answer your questions, and explore whether MindBalance Learning is the right fit.