How Acorn Can Help:

Review Psychological and Specialist Reports

• Write a summarized report that is in “common language” so that you and your child’s teachers can understand how your child will learn best.
  
  
• Review accommodations suggested and discuss with you and educators how to implement them in the home and classroom.
  
  
• Discuss best therapies and practices to attempt next (Speech Therapist, Occupational Therapist, Reading Tutor, etc…).
  
  
• Prioritize skills that will help empower student in the classroom and home.
  
  
• Outline questions you have and research state-of-the practices and interventions that fit your child’s personality and capabilities.

Create Comprehensive Academic Plan

• Provide guidance and support throughout plan implementation.
  
  
• Revisit plan and make adjustments as needed.
  

Assist with Communication with School and Teachers

• Help develop goals and suggestions on how to achieve improvement.
  
  
• Provide assistance in developing constructive questions for child’s teachers.
  
  
• Review feedback from school and provide guidance for next steps.

Additional Services Available

• Tutor in reading and study skills.
  
  
• Prepare for and attend teacher conferences, staffing meetings, and IEP or academic improvement meetings.

Closing Gaps

We are dedicated to helping parents find sophisticated approaches that build on the skills your child needs to be successful. We construct plans that parallel the school’s curriculum paying close attention to what basic academic skills need enhancement or rehabilitation.

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Feel Empowered as Your Child’s Advocate

No one knows your child they way you do. Their struggles become your struggles. Restoring your child’s confidence is our number one agenda.

Often parents become overloaded with advice and recommendations that cause them to feel confused and overwhelmed. We work closely with you, your children, and their teachers to design the optimal plan of action that works with your family’s priorities, creating a balance that helps you, the parent, feel in control of your child’s academic future.

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Finding Balance

Parents want balance not only in the home but in their child’s educational setting. In order for you to nurture your child’s educational experience you need to have an open-minded platform that allows for change and growth.

Together we can explore how to create a system that allows your child to gracefully transition from different educational settings.

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About Susan Elliott, Educational Consultant

Ms. Elliott began her work in education in 1996, teaching children with autism at Bear Creek Elementary School in Boulder, Colorado. A year later, Ms. Elliott began volunteering at a migrant farming tutoring center in Longmont, Colorado, where she tutored Spanish-speaking children in grades 3-8 in reading and basic math.

In 2001, Ms. Elliott started teaching at Milwee Middle School, a Title 1 school in Longwood, Florida, as a Specific Learning Disabilities teacher. Challenged to teach reading to largely illiterate children, Ms. Elliott began using pictures as interpretive tools to help her students understand the content and vocabulary of stories she read aloud to them in class. Before long, this group of children, who had been regularly pegged as under-achievers and thus assigned basal readers, were actively participating in class discussions about social and economic issues as they related to the grade-level story being read. Inspired by the children’s thoughts and their courage to engage for the first time in grade level books, Ms. Elliott made it her goal to find a way to help all children read age appropriate books.

Having built a reputation in the local community as a successful SLD teacher, Lake Highland Preparatory School, in Orlando, Florida, recruited Susan in 2005 to work as a tutor in their Academic Learning Lab with students who had diagnosed learning disabilities. As the Learning Disability Specialist for the Upper School Edison program, Susan was responsible not only for assisting learning disabled students in grades 9-12, but also for aligning the goals of the program with the standards of the school. To achieve that end, Susan met regularly with the faculty to educate them on the unique needs of SLD students, successful strategies for teaching SLD students, and new laws and legislation regarding SLD students. In addition, Susan consulted parents of SLD children on homework and test preparation strategies.

Ms. Elliott has a BS in Exceptional Education and is a Certified SLD Teacher.

Click HERE to contact Acorn Teaching Solutions for Educational Consulting Services