A Middle School Miracle

In third grade, Avi was still laboriously working out three-letter words while her peers were fluently reading chapter books. By fifth grade, her teachers had given up on her ever learning to write. But this spring, Avi was accepted at the School for Creative and Performing Arts to pursue a double major in Costume and Fashion Design and, yes, Creative Writing.

“We had been contributing to a college fund for Avi,” said her mother Tiphanie, “but by the end of fourth grade we realized that if something didn’t change, we would never need that money. We had a complete educational assessment done, and when Avi heard the diagnoses of dyslexia, dyscalculia (learning disabilities in language and math) and ADHD, she cried tears of relief. Now we had something we could work with.”

Avi began attending Springer in sixth grade, and within a week, she was thanking her parents. “I knew we had done something exceptional,” Tiphanie remembered, “when I asked Avi if she needed help with homework, and she said no, it was finished. When she struggled with seventh grade math at Springer, she wasn’t afraid of what she didn’t know. She knew she would get the help she needed to understand.”

Throughout her middle school years at Springer, Avi learned to use strategies for organizing her writing, and technology tools that made her writing more efficient, allowing her to finally communicate her thoughts through writing. It was her eighth grade writing teacher who suggested she consider auditioning for the Creative Writing program at SCPA. “I have to admit I was fearful of failure,” recalled Tiphanie. “But Avi applied the strategies and tools she had gained at Springer, and worked for six months on the audition materials. Now I have to ask her to stop writing at night!”