| Dyslexia Research Institute |
Nick entered WHA in 10th grade. He saw no future for himself in school – he didn’t believe he could graduate. But through the guidance of the teaching staff and the specialized curriculum that TAUGHT THE WAY HE LEARNED, Nick found out that he was truly bright.
Nick was the one the rest of the students turned to when there was a “weighty question” requiring a “weighty answer.” Asked recently what was his favorite thing at WHA, Nick said, “The teachers”. Nick is currently in the U.S. Air Force working as a Radio Technician. Without the guidance and academic support he received at Woodland Hall Academy, Nick acknowledges that the door to the military would have been closed to him.
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Imagine being 12 years old, struggling to write and rewrite a paragraph for two hours, only to have the teacher squash it into a ball and pitch it into the garbage can saying, “Spend time on your homework – don’t give me trash like this.” What would you do? Adam, a brilliant, young student with dyslexia and dysgraphia (disability in writing) came to us in 6th grade – hurt, angry, and burned out. He left us in 11th grade and in 1989 graduated in the top 10 percent of his class from public high school.
Adam went on to graduate from FAMU with a degree in construction engineering. Now in his early thirties, he is a successful engineer, a great family man, and a giver in the community. He credits Woodland Hall Academy with turning his life around. Adam spoke to WHA students at the 2005 graduation ceremony:
“My sage advice to you is to always keep your goals in reach; keep them in sight, so that you will always have them to look to when you feel like you have hit bottom and need something to try for again, and always keep your eyes open, so that you won’t ever let the dyslexia that you have learned to compensate for sneak back up on you and keep you from achieving the great potential inside each of you.”
Adam says of his earlier school experiences, “I was circling the drain, Woodland Hall and my parents kept me from drowning.”
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Veronica was a cute 3rd grader. She was bright but she wasn’t reading. The reason her parents were told was because she was bilingual! They didn’t agree and testing proved that Veronica had dyslexia – not a cultural problem. “Woodland Hall didn’t just change my child’s life; it changed my life" says Regina Lopez-Loucel Smyly. “I had to change what I was doing at home, so she could change what she was doing. Without Woodland Hall I wouldn’t have known what to do.” Veronica is now an FSU graduate and works in Miami for a doctor.
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| Tolar Griffin |
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| What would you do as a parent if you were told your second grader, who couldn’t read, was “not bad enough” to receive help from the public school, but to wait two years and he would be “bad enough” to need help?
Ms. Griffin didn’t wait two years. She found Woodland Hall Academy which was 50 miles away. For five years she arranged car pools and “tag team rides” to take her son, Tolar, to Woodland Hall. Not only did Tolar learn to read, but he graduated high school in the National Honors Society, went to FSU on a scholarship and graduated as a History teacher. During his first year of teaching, he was selected as the Leon County First Year Teacher of the Year. He is now an assistant principal working with at-risk kids.
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