My name is Kendall, and I LOVE to teach. I have been married for 18 years, we have four amazing kids, and I have been homeschooling for nine years. When reading didn’t come easily to my very bright, oldest child in Kindergarten, I didn’t worry too much. “All kids learn at their own pace; she will get it next year,” I told myself. But when we moved to East Texas and she was still sounding out CVC words like “cat” and “top” in the middle of second grade, I suspected we had a problem.

Thus began our journey down the long winding path of receiving a dyslexia diagnosis and trying to help her learn to read. We tried so many different things, spent so much money, and cried so many tears! And then I heard about EBLI (Evidence Based Literacy Instruction) from a Facebook group. I was skeptical that its claims were too good to be true, like so many of the other programs, curriculums, therapies, and products we had tried. By this time, my second child was also making slower than expected progress in reading. I decided to give EBLI a try since I could use it with both of them and it incorporates reading, writing, spelling, and handwriting.

In August of eighth grade, my oldest could read a sentence or two at a time at a first grade reading level. After the first month, I could tell that EBLI was starting to work. Only a few weeks later, she picked up Charlotte’s Web and started reading it. She read the first chapter to me and then went in her room and kept reading. This was the first time in her life that she had read anything by choice. We both cried. But this time it was tears of joy.

My son has made great progress as well. They are so much more willing to read and write in everyday life. The transformation in my kids has been so much bigger than that though. Watching their confidence soar has been incredible. Through tutoring with Growing Oaks in East Texas and online, I now get to watch the world of reading and learning open up to each new student I teach.