If anyone is thinking about hiring a tutor for their child, I highly recommend contacting Amanda.  She worked with both of my sons to help improve their reading and writing.  Toward the end of kindergarten, my son Jason was still having difficulty identifying letters, determining letter-sound awareness, and recognizing high-frequency words.  Jason’s teacher wanted to retain him, but my husband and I were very much opposed to that suggestion.  Instead, we opted to find a tutor to catch Jason up throughout the summer months.  From the beginning, Amanda’s knowledge was evident and her goals for Jason were clear.  Amanda not only helped him catch up to reading at his grade level, but also helped him apply those skills to writing basic sentences, and helped him increase his confidence as he entered first grade.  With continued tutoring, Jason is now reading fluently, is able to comprehend what he reads, and is eager to show off his reading ability.  My son Avery also worked with Amanda, but as a fourth grader, he had different needs.  She helped him develop strategies to organize his thoughts, utilize acronyms to help format various types of essays, introduced him to “compositional risks,” and taught him how to go back to edit and revise his work.   He always had great ideas, but as a result of his tutoring sessions he can now put those ideas on paper in a comprehensible manner. 

         Throughout all of these sessions Amanda was not only kind and patient, but also creative and prepared.  She always came equipped with different hands-on items such as play dough, an iPad, laptop, crafts, songs, visual aids, erasable sentence strips, and so much more.  What my husband and I love most about Amanda is her ability to adapt her tutoring style in a manner that is creative, comfortable, and motivating to both of my sons given their very unique personalities, strengths, and challenges.  As parents nothing is more heartbreaking than watching your child frustrated because they weren’t given the right opportunities to reach their potential.  Fortunately, my heartbreak has transformed into elation. Witnessing the academic improvement that my sons experienced was incredible, but watching my children transform into proud, eager, and motivated learners was much more than I expected! My entire family is grateful for Amanda’s help and this overall experience.