Our Successes

Sarah’s Story

Hello everyone, thank you for having me here today. My name is Sarah Rearick. I go to Central Valley Academy and I’m in the 10th grade. I just finished my first year at the Dyslexia Center. I will be speaking to you about the Children’s Dyslexia Center and how it has improved my reading and quality of life.

At a young age I suffered from anxiety along with undiagnosed dyslexia. My anxiety got worse because I was being bullied by others was an everyday occurrence, so I decided to go on my own and teach myself a bit more. The strategy I used was writing words hundreds of times to memorize them. I didn’t just write them, I turned them into pieces of art. These were successes in my private life, but my anxiety and awkwardness only got worse. I became depressed because of these issues going on internally.

The center has helped me gain self-esteem and confidence. After only being here for one year, I can talk positively about myself and my accomplishments.

Some people might think that kids or even adults don’t utilize this program to help themselves outside of it. They are wrong because if I don’t know a word and I just can’t read it I’ll ask for help from one of my friends so then I know what it says. After that, I finger spell it or I trace it three times. These are techniques that I’ve learned here. I’ve even helped some of my friends with them. Not only has this program helped me read a lot better, it has also helped me write better. My best friend says the Dyslexia Center has helped your writing, your writing is more clean, cut and consistent. I can fully understand what you are writing about. The tools I used were fingerspelling, tracing words on my arm and fluency deck. I took this knowledge to the classroom to help out one of my friends who was struggling. These lessons I have learned have actually helped increase my memory. I’m an ROTC

member, and even though I am passionate about the program, my memory has made it a struggle for me to remember my general orders. After being in the center, I am able to read my orders and feel more confident when I’m being questioned at uniform inspection. I love it here and every time I leave this place I either say I love them or I mouth it with a ????hand signal to my mother . There were days I didn’t even want to leave my house or do anything but then I came here and everybody was so welcoming. I just love being here. I’ve cried just thinking about what it would be like to leave Miss Rachel (my tutor) and this place, I just love being around the tutors and learning about stuff from them. The Children’s Dyslexia Center has helped me and many others by helping me read and write, with my anxiety, depression, memory loss, self-esteem, confidence, and how I feel mentally. On top of all that I am just one kid saying all of this. How many others are out there like me? Everyone here is so funny, supportive and kind. My first day I was stuttering my words. I was scared because I didn’t know anyone, but the staff made me feel confident with being here.  I quickly warmed up and others came to me. I found a place to call home! If it wasn’t for these people I don’t know where I would even be. Actually, I do know I’d be up in my room, staring at the ceiling doing nothing. I know I wouldn’t be this happy as I am now and I’m only one year in the program. I’m not the best speaker, but if you were to ask me on stage to talk about reading and writing, I would not have done it before I came here. I’d be afraid of what I’d do wrong. I wouldn’t sleep, I purposely wouldn’t go to it as I have stage fright. But when I am with the people I love, I feel I can speak freely, maybe not too freely but you get it. I did something like this last year for my ROTC program and I was on stage shaking so bad. I said I would never do something like that ever again so if that doesn’t tell you how much this program means to me, I don’t know what will. When I get older, I think I want to work here and become a tutor. I want to help as many people

as I can. I want to help others just like Miss Rachel has helped me. Miss Rachel is just so unbelievably sweet, kind and just so funny. Sometimes we wouldn’t know how to pronounce words so we would just make it into a little inside joke like “mimiogram” and Yes, we would say it like that.

Thank you for allowing me to talk and tell my story about the Dyslexia Center and how it’s affecting my life in a positive way.