Mark HopperOceanside, CAAre READING DEMONS Ruling Your Life? STRIKE BACK! Corrective Reading Builds Fluency & Confidence.
My short story to describe my qualifications and expertise teaching students who struggle to read from grades four on through grade 12 are as follows:
1. Ph.D. in special education from Utah State University.
2. MSW in child welfare and psychiatric social work from the University of California, Berkeley.
3. TEFL Certificate in Teaching English as a Foreign Language.
4. TESOL Certificate on IELTS requirements to prepare students taking the IELTS test.
5. 20 years diagnosing and correcting errors and poor reading habits for students ‘in grades 4 through 12.
6. 15 years providing therapeutic and social services children and adolescence who were victims of severe traumatic experiences.
7. Consultant with the US Department of Education to determine what reading curricula is in compliance with standards established for classification as a science of reading curricula.
8. 20 years’ experience in child and adolescent residential facilities where students had comorbid emotional disorders combined with reading disabilities such as ADHD, dyslexia, autism spectrum and developmental disabilities.
Qualifications are one matter but equally important and perhaps more so is what is behind and supportive of the qualifications? For me it is a passion that every child can be taught to read and it is our obligation to assure every child is given that opportunity, with validated reading curricula and teaching processes. In my early professional years providing therapeutic services for traumatized children and youth I witnessed disastrous effects that failing in their school placements brought to them. It was this realization that drove me back to school where I obtained a doctorate degree in special education. While degrees are perhaps one measure of expertise it is not the only one. For me, of more importance is my experience of having seen the positive effects time and time again that my students take away after solving their problematic reading issues.
