About

Background, credentials, and the story behind Strides Literacy.

Background & Credentials

My degree in Linguistics, from York University, subsequently led me to my PGCE in Secondary English teaching. I spent 16 years in this role until making the switch to Primary Education in 2019. I continued to tutor children of all ages privately in the meantime, allowing me to combine my enjoyment of teaching both age phases.

Through training with Dyslexia Action (formerly The Dyslexia Institute), I qualified as a Level 5 Literacy Intervention Specialist Teacher, which ties together all my years of experience of Linguistics, Literacy and teaching of different age phases.

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Sarah, Specialist Literacy Intervention Teacher

The Role of Literacy Intervention

I have often worked with students with Dyslexia diagnoses both in tuition and in the classroom and I began to see that more was needed than what can traditionally be available for children. Most teachers receive only very cursory training of learning difficulties in their degrees and then learn, as I did, as much as possible through experience, and through following advice of SEN Leadership. As positive as those interactions may be, in terms of what this means for individual students, and the support they can access, it is often not enough, incorrect or ineffectively applied. There is a gap in provision for children with literacy difficulties which current systems do not bridge well enough.

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Literacy difficulties, which may or may not be as a result of dyslexia are complex and varied and without expertise and time to discover the roots of errors, can be very hard to fully overcome. The beauty of the role of a specialist teacher is having the ability to analyse the student's literacy profile and put individualised strategies in place which will work for them.

Any parent of a child with literacy difficulties will know how inconsistent their child's intervention experience can be. As a teacher, and as one of those parents, I know the reasons behind this are many and varied. My mission is to fill the gaps for as many young people as possible and for more specialist teachers to be employed by schools to do the same.

As a freelance Literacy Specialist Intervention teacher, I can not be re-directed in my role; my role can not be modified by the changing needs of the school. My focus is maintained on one area only and cannot be diluted by the changing priorities of a school. This provides my clients and learners with consistency, quality, integrity and fidelity.

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