The Orton-Gillingham Multisensory Method, a sequential reading and spelling system developed in the early 1930s, was the first program to explain how sounds and letters were related, how sounds and letters acted in words, and how a word could be broken into smaller pieces. The Method was direct, explicit, multisensory, structured, sequential, and required reinforcement with regular practice.  Created by neuropsychiatrist and pathologist Samuel Torrey Orton (1879-1948), the Orton- Gillingham Method synthesized neuroscientific data with principles of remediation. Later, psychologist Anna Gillingham (1878-1963), published the first materials for student instruction and teacher training based on this Method.  The Orton-Gillingham Method is the basis of the Megan McDonald Solutions Unlocking Dyslexia dyslexia remediation program. 

My oldest daughter was diagnosed with dyslexia in March of her 8th-grade year. She was a frustrated, angry, underachieving student. Three years later, she scored a 35 on the reading portion of the ACT, achieving an overall score of 34. I owe this to several factors.  I used the Megan McDonald Solutions Unlocking Dyslexia Program with her. But also, I did not let Maggie, or any of my students, off the hook regarding reading and writing because they had dyslexia.  On the contrary!  Now that I could name,  “The Noise,” I combined this with what I knew: they were brilliant.

I am always curious to learn the why of an individual’s chosen occupation. Upon meeting a doctor for the first time I inevitably ask them why they chose their given vocation.  A fair question, then, is WHY I chose to homeschool? (Some might even rephrase it to ask, “Why on earth would I homeschool?”).  

I have a goal, a vision, for the kind of human I want staring back at me at my front door when he or she is twenty years old. I dial it back from there to age one, or two, and everything going forward from that point is dedicated wholly toward that vision. I want a child looking back at me that isn’t content with happiness, but truly knows where happiness comes from.

Specifically, as a home educator, my goals are three-fold:  I homeschool to produce students who are:

• intellectually curious (and it is my job to feed that curiosity as their educator)
• well-read (one book a week . . . forever) and
• character/religious motivation in sending forth a child who understood their place, their value, their role in the world.

I had been home educating for ten YEARS when we learned of dyslexia. Of course, I felt tremendously guilty for not discovering this earlier. Of course, I felt tremendous fear about what lay ahead. But I knew that  I was not going to abandon my goals for my children just because of this diagnosis. We were going to achieve the trifold goals together; I just had to figure out how!

Initially, I fell into home education by accident and committed to this lifestyle for only one year. I figured whatever intellectual damage I did to my oldest son, I could then pass him on to his first-grade teacher to fix. The truth of why I originally made the choice to actually homeschool? Because the cost of parochial kindergarten was more than my first year of law school, and this offended my righteous self.  After giving appropriate due diligence to the weighty task of finding the appropriate kindergarten school for one’s firstborn, I found a parochial school that was 20-25 minutes away.  I thought of my day with my two younger children at that time. Driving 45 minutes twice a day . . . I couldn’t imagine what he would gain that I could not give him in that 1.5 hours at home.

 So … my initial motives to homeschool this little boy were all based on the merits of home education? I had only met one person who homeschooled, ever. One evening I had a meeting for church and the organizer brought her two children, who did the oddest thing . . . they sat quietly on the periphery of the meeting, each contently reading a book, ages about eight and nine . . . for the whole meeting. At that time I had three    W I L D children at home swinging from the chandeliers whom I could not get to sit for three seconds. There were three children under four years old.  I was not in love with my vocation at that time.  I missed work, I missed the gratification, the checks and balances, the rewards, and my kids were W I L D, have I mentioned that? But as I looked at the organizer of our meeting and her children calmly and patiently content in themselves and in their person and in their endeavors, I thought, “I want that.”  And I honestly have never looked back.