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special learning teacher manifesto about me page

Have you been looking for someone to give your straightforward solutions to your everyday problems that come with raising a child with ADHD, Autism, or Specific Learning Disabilities?

 

Are you pouring over book after book, endlessly sifting through Google searches, yearning to find straightforward solutions that you can start using right away?

 

You have finally been granted your wish. This is the place where you can find your answers to questions about how to supportyour child with specific learning disabilities, ADHD, or Autism.

 

I am James Street, the Special Learning Teacher. I help parents of children with Specific Learning Disabilities, ADHD, and Autism to increase their children’s independence, academic performance, and positive behaviors through teaching parents how to create a supportive learning environment at home.

If it has to do with

Learning + Special Education + School, I can help

Who is the Special Learning Teacher?

I want to be the teacher that my brother needed, but never had.

I want to be the resource that my family searched for, but never found.

 

I'm James, the Special Learning Teacher, and growing up with my older brother Ethan, who has Down Syndrome, was the biggest blessing.  

I knew from an early age that I would spend the rest of my life helping students like Ethan AND their families find success in school.

 

Getting a good IEP that met Ethan's needs was always a great source of stress for my parents, despite my mom being a university professor and my dad being a lawyer. That's why I became a special education teacher, and I really hope my website and emails will help your family have better results for your awesome child.

 

My goal is to help you feel empowered and confident to use your voice and advocate for your child's academic success. Using my background as a behavioral clinician, tutor, Special Olympics Coach, teacher, and most importantly brother, I've helped many families have successful IEPs.

 

And I want to help you too.

 

If you still have questions about ANY aspect of your child’s education, or an outside perspective on your IEP,  email me for 1-on-1 support.

 

If you have tests results and don't know what they mean, or can't figure out how to use them to your child’s advantage, I can walk you through them to give you a common-sense understanding of what the results really mean for your child. I'll show you how to turn the results into meaningful action steps you can take for your child.

 

Want highly customized individual learning plans to help your child start thriving in reading, writing, or math? These are basically like having a personal special education teacher guide you through activities and games that are designed to help your child enjoy learning and get better grades.

 

My mission in life is to help as many families as I can. Please don't hesitate to email me.

James@SpecialLearningTeacher.com

 

 

 

Crendentials

Tutoring:

 

  • I helped one of my students raise his grade from a D to a high B in just 6 weeks. We worked on content, went over homework and quizzes, and worked on  I taught him test taking strategies and he got an A on the final test.

 

  • I had a student who wanted to skip a grade level in math. taught the entire contents of Algebra I to a student over a 6 week period in the summer.  Even though he ended up changing his mind, it was a challenge that both he and I

 

 

Parent Education:

 

  • One of my students has a particularly unique set of challenges. The parents were frustrated, with a half-dozen different professionals telling them conflicting information. When we first started working together, we would meet every week to discuss new strategies in our quest to find what works best for their child. Now we meet every week just to try to keep up with the child’s progress. Every week we have to shift our targets to make sure we are providing the child with room to grow. The parents now know how to advocate for their child and can even teach professionals how to best support their child.

 

  • I tutored a young homeschooler, targeting beginning reading skills. His mom would sit in for each session, and I would show her the teaching strategies and give her a basic foundation. She was able to implement them at home and in weeks, the tantrums, the arguing, the whining all but disappeared.

 

 

Teaching:

 

  • I’m a full time math teacher, but in my first year as a teacher, I taught a few reading workshop classes. To this day, I still have students coming by my room and saying they wished they were still in my reading class.

 

  • I help students learn how to become self-sufficient problem-solvers. I am the enemy of learned-helplessness. Where there is a child that says, “I don’t get it” before even looking at the problem, I will be there, encouraging them to try their best.

 

  • I taught an afterschool reading class to students who did not pass the first round of our Hawaii State Assessments. Of the 18 students who attended regularly, 14 of them passed on the very next round.

 

  • I taught a summer bridge math course to students who didn’t pass the Hawaii State Assessment the previous year. 4 of my 14 students ended up passing on the very first (of three) rounds! The first round happens at the end of the first semester, but covers the whole year’s worth of expectations.

Experience:

 

  • Special Olympics Coach

    • Involved with helping and coaching the team since age 9

  • Certified K-12 Special Education Teacher

    • I specialize in students with Autism, ADHD, and Specific Learning Disabilities

    • Teach Math and English to K-12 students with special needs from a variety of backgrounds under supervision of excellent mentor teachers

  • Highly qualified in Middle School English Language Arts and Math

    • Currently co-teaching Inclusion Math classes for 6th and 7th grade

  • Behavioral Clinician for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

    • Expertise in working with  parents in the home setting to provide
      meaningful interventions for their children

    • Worked at Koegel Autism Center administering Pivotal Responce Therapy (PRT) to students with Autism Spectrum Disorder - learned to develop behavioral interventions for children with Autism

  • Parent Educator

    • Support parents to create simple solutions to big problems in academics,
      social, behavioral and family-related areas

  • Education Brain Research Laboratory Graduate Assistant

  • Standardized Reading Test Administrator

    • Standardized Reading Test Administrator in Education Brain Research Laboratory - learned about neural processes involved in reading

  • Private tutor for students with special needs / giftedness

  • Brother to student wtih Down Syndrome

Education:

 

  • B.S. in  Psychology from University of California Santa Barbara
     

  • M.Ed. in Special Education from Vanderbilt University

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