Beyond Tutoring:: A guide for parents who want REAL answers to their child’s academic struggles

By Debra Gawrys

This book was written as a guide to parents or guardians of students who might be struggling with academics. Struggling with academics can lead to much frustration for both the students and parents. It can also lead to school anxiety and generalized anxiety. This book should serve as a guide for understanding these students and knowing what kind of help to seek. Hopefully, this book will answer questions for those struggling to get help for their children. Questions such as, why is my child struggling, what kind of help is best, what can I expect from the school, how does this affect my child, what can I expect for the future?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9781669865315

Debra Gawrys

About the author: Debra Gawrys has her B.A. in Education and her master’s degree from St. Xavier University in Learning Disabilities. She has taught 2nd, 5th, and 6th grades in the classroom and was also a learning disabilities resource teacher in the suburban public school system. After teaching, she decided to go into private practice where she worked from home for nine years, before moving to the current Beverly location. Debra began her practice in her home in 1997. She had just learned that her own daughter was dyslexic. After finding the Wilson Reading System and going for the initial training Debra began teaching her daughter to finally read. It worked so well that Debra told a couple of other mothers about the program, and then began tutoring from her home. Their children also did great, and they began telling other parents about Debra. Debra became so busy that she hired another teacher and trained her. Then another and another, until there were four other teachers working for her from the basement of her home. This work continued for 9 years and then she outgrew her home. This was all from word of mouth. At that point, Debra found her present location and Connections Learning Center was founded. That was almost ten years ago. She feels blessed to have been able to help so many children over the years. And it all started with her own daughter being dyslexic. Since then, Debra has learned so much and has become solution oriented. Debra knows, first hand, how difficult it is when parents are looking for answers regarding their children. So much time and money is wasted on things that don’t work. At Connections Learning Center, Debra strives to have a solution for every parent who walks through her doors, and she look forward to helping many more students in the future.

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Copyright © 2023 by Debra Gawrys.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 11/24/2023

Xlibris

844-714-8691

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1   And Then There Was Kristen

Chapter 2   But First, There Was Nick

Chapter 3   Why Is My Child Struggling?

Chapter 4   What Are Cognitive-Processing Skills?

Chapter 5   Could My Child Be Dyslexic?

Chapter 6   What Else?

Chapter 7   Screen Time

Chapter 8   Finding Solutions

INTRODUCTION

Had I written this book thirty years ago, it would have been a very different book. I probably would have talked about the various learning disabilities students can have. There would have been discussion about accommodations and how to teach students to compensate for their weaknesses. You would have been told that your child would have to learn to live with their learning disability while working around their weaknesses and using their strengths. Well, this is not thirty years ago, and I have learned a lot over the years, mainly caused by giving birth to two children who had their own challenges. Their challenges posed a challenge for me, and even though I had a master’s degree in learning disabilities from a top university, I did not have the knowledge I needed to help my own children. Unfortunately, most teachers graduating today still don’t have the knowledge they should be armed with as they go out into the trenches. There are thousands of well-meaning, dedicated educators who are not equipped with the information they need to help so many students who have learning challenges. In this book, I will first share a portion of my story as a mother of children facing their own challenges. My hope is that through sharing my story, the reader can perhaps relate their own experiences to mine. I will then explain what I have learned as a mother and as an educator who has devoted the past twenty-five years helping students of all ages overcome and even resolve their academic challenges. The reader will learn about the various types of learning difficulties, but in sharp contrast to most other books on this subject, you will learn about real solutions to these difficulties.

Perhaps you’ve been told your child has a learning disability. What does that mean exactly? What is a learning disability? One definition is that it is a condition causing difficulties in gaining knowledge and skills to the level expected of those of the same age, especially when not associated with a physical handicap. Medicinenet.com defines it as a childhood disorder characterized by difficulty with certain skills such as reading or writing in individuals with normal intelligence.

Now that I have explained what is meant by a learning disability, let me say that it is a term I prefer not to use. A disability suggests a condition that poses limits to a person’s physical or mental ability. It also suggests something that is permanent. Because I know that learning disabilities do not have to be permanent, I prefer the term learning weakness or challenge. What are these weaknesses or challenges? About 80 percent of the time, they represent weak cognitive skills or cognitive-processing deficits, and these can be strengthened.

What kind of challenges will we be discussing? All of them and not just in terms of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Some challenges are easy to identify, such as when a student has trouble learning to read, but others can be less obvious, such as when a student reads well but cannot comprehend. If a student is reading well, but not comprehending, there are several possible reasons, and why a student is not comprehending will tell us what solution is appropriate. Often students are evaluated, and parents are told their child has poor reading comprehension. The challenge is in knowing why a person is not comprehending. Sometimes it’s not even a true reading comprehension weakness but is caused by another weakness that is interfering with comprehension. Fix that weakness, fix the reading-comprehension problem. So often parents come to me because their children are suffering from test anxiety. Most of the time there is a learning weakness causing the student to do poorly on tests. If any person continually does poorly on tests, they will definitely develop anxiety when having to take a test. In other words, consistently doing poorly on tests causes the anxiety, and therefore, it is not the anxiety causing the poor test-taking. That is a huge distinction. However, the evaluator must understand what those causes could be. More will be discussed about this in detail later in the book. The point is that if your child is struggling in school, there is most likely an underlying weakness at the core of the problem. Yes, even if the problem is poor attention. In writing this book, it is my hope that you, as a parent or guardian, will understand why the problem is occurring and what needs to be done to fix the problem.

Take a minute to make a list of what your child’s challenges look like. Your list may include something specific, such as cannot decode or cannot pay attention, and/or your list might include the affects you are seeing, such as anxiety, poor standardized test