{Disclaimer: We have partnered together with Stern Center to bring you this sponsored post on their services.}
A new school year is an exciting time for both students and parents! We often wonder how our children will do, what their teacher will be like, what subjects they will connect with this year, and what kind of friendships they will develop. As the year progresses, we, as parents, may find that the hopes we had for a successful school year for our children are not exactly materializing the way we had imagined. What do we do if we see our children struggling with their subjects and homework? What resources do we have available in our community that can help?
The BVTMB is excited to introduce you to one of our sponsors, Stern Center!
They believe that a learner is not a problem to be corrected but rather a promise to be fulfilled. Empathy matters.
Their commitment is to work with you to help you better understand your own individual strengths and skills. At the Stern Center, they want you to succeed, because when you do – they do too.
In the late 1960s Dr. Blanche Podhajski, President and Founder of the Stern Center for Language and Learning, began teaching preschoolers struggling with language at a hospital clinic in Vermont. She was intrigued as to why some of them had trouble making sounds correctly enough to be intelligible and why others spoke as clear as a bell but in only one or two word phrases. She was even more intrigued when these delays would be “fixed,” but would then have the same children come back at a later date speaking fine, but with reading and spelling problems. What was going on in their young brains?
After 15 years of clinical work, university teaching, and private practice, Dr. Podhajski formed a nonprofit, Center for Language and Cerebral Function, providing evaluations and direct instruction for individuals and professional learning for educators and physicians. Funded by a $50,000 grant from the Bernice and Milton Stern Foundation, the Stern Center for Language and Learning was opened in 1983.
For more than 30 years, the Stern Center has been making strides in the fields of language and learning. Using research-based practices, they have developed educator training programs, established a second location providing services for over 800 students and 1,500 educators annually, and created partnerships with national organizations to help expand teacher knowledge and in turn ensure that children are ready to read by kindergarten.
Blanche states, “I know so many Moms who have read to their children since they were in the womb and still see sad faces on these same children who hate reading – because they don’t know how. Moms are powerful advocates and know their children well. If your child has trouble with sounds, reading words, spelling, or understanding vocabulary and text, she may need more explicit teaching. Some good parent resources are A Child Becomes a Reader: Proven Ideas from Research for Parents, available free from the National Institute for Literacy and the book Straight Talk about Reading by Hall and Moats, available through most book stores.”
The Stern Center provides explicit teaching through customized instruction. Their staff works with the student, family and school team to create an individualized instruction plan to help your child reach his/her full potential. They have discovered through years of experience that each child learns differently, at their own pace, and with assistance, establishes their own goals to help build confidence and achieve success. Their services provide assistance in reading, writing, spelling, math and enrichment as well as study and organization skills. They have a multi-disciplinary staff that consists of evaluators, instructors, and Social Thinking(R) coaches. Ranging from teachers, special educators, specialists, diagnosticians, Autism specialists and Speech Language Pathologists, they bring a wealth of knowledge and experience all under one roof!
Interested in learning more about what Stern Center has to offer? Reach out to them using the contact information below!
[…] hardest thing is to watch your child struggle, and it’s even worse when they struggle with something that should come naturally and […]