Life with READing

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February 2nd, 2017

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Nicklaus Bartelli

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“If you’d asked me when I was four or five years old what I wanted to be I’d tell you I wanted to be a scientist,” said Dr. David Hurford, professor and chair of psychology and counseling at Pittsburg State. Hurford’s childhood passion turned into developmental human behavioral research as he progressed through his doctorate degree. He became the brain behind the Center for Research, Evaluation and Awareness of Dyslexia, or the READing Center that started in 1996 at PSU.

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The center for READing located in Whitesitt Hall has helped thousands of individuals from ages 4 to 63 since its inception. One 9-year-old that travels from the Blue Valley School District in Kansas City one day a week to the reading center is Porter Walch, and the program and tutors are shaping his future for the better. Porter has been diagnosed with dyslexia, a disorder where interpreting words, letters, phonetics and syllables becomes difficult, making learning and keeping up in regular paced schoolwork a burdensome task. For Porter and his family, learning what type of treatment he needed took time, exhausted resources, and several answers from many doctors. His mother Karyn quit her job to put all her energy into making sure her son could read. By second grade, Porter was in the center for reading at Pitt State under Dr. Hurford.

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Hurford has worked throughout his life designing a program that is meant to prevent kids starting in kindergarten, with or without dyslexia, from having a reading problem later in development. Where normal reading disorder rates among classes of students hit 20-30 percent, schools who go through programs like Dr. Hurford’s see rates as low as 3 percent of kids with reading problems.

While she admitted to learning every lyric to every Kidz Bop album, the two hour drive from Kansas City to Pittsburg State every Tuesday has been worth it for Karyn Walch because of the growth she has seen in her son Porter.

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“Porter, he works harder than anyone I know. We sneak learning in everywhere we can. When we play baseball Porter goes to bat and he reads a word, and if he misses, he reads a sentence. Its incorporated into everything,” Mrs. Walch said.

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“It seems like we do a lot of running around and chaos but that’s the way it needs to because that’s what helps,” said Lauren Renner, a graduate specialist in education student who has been working at the READing Center for 4 years, helping tutor kids including Porter, and who knows the curriculum and the benefits of multi-sensory learning.

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“It’s not rocket science and it’s not some magical tutoring formula, we just go all the way down to the most basic level of reading regardless of where they test and that way they can gain confidence and work their way up,” Renner said.

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Courtney Hensler is a senior psychology major who has worked with a girl from Oklahoma who could barely spell her name starting out and is now reading and writing sentences and paragraphs.

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“Especially at a young age when you’re told you are different it can translate into feeling like I’m wrong or broken, and it’s not it’s just a different part of who you are… they feel like they have to hide it, and instead you can make connections from it… and here it’s something that can be celebrated, this is just for them,” Hensler said.

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“I remember Porter when we walked up to the building say that when he first came here he only knew ‘the,’ ‘it,’ and his name,” his mom said.

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In his last lesson, Porter started out reading three and four syllable words. When Porter comes for a session he says he thinks about it not as tutoring, but kind of like playing games.

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“I either play wiffle ball or soccer… We learn a certain sound and then read words with that sound in it,” Porter said. “Just learning how to read is probably the one thing I like most about this place.”

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He goes home and looks forward to sharing with his Dad what he has accomplished. Porter has his own podcast that his dad helps him with where listeners submit questions like “why do people sweat” and “what is the fastest animal.” He answers these questions and shares a “country of the week.” “Porter’s Podcast” can be found on iTunes and has over 1,000 listeners from multiple countries.

Porter’s intelligence and drive serve as a testament that students with dyslexia do not usually have lower IQ and functioning outside of reading. Common misconceptions are that words float off pages or that dyslexia is a visual impairment that ruins multiple aspects of life. Individuals with dyslexia often focus on one part of a word, emphasize incorrect syllables, or skip words on a page.

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Parents can spend thousands of dollars searching for answers for their kids, which is why dyslexia has become a prominent issue in education politics in America recently. A growing parental force is guiding the legislative agenda in several states, including Missouri, who just passed a law requiring public schools to screen for dyslexia, and have teachers train in a two-hour course to understand how to address the disorder.

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Professional help for remediating reading disorders can cost anywhere from $14,000 to $30,000 a year, and assessment fees can be over $2,000. Many families cannot afford the help, and students suffer the consequences. With the Pittsburg State’s Center for READing, cost is based on an income gradient scale. Assessments cost $35 to $350 and sessions are based off low $30 and under per half-hour rates. Part of that help comes from donations and the volunteer network of students implementing Hurford’s program.

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“I think it’s amazing we have so many tutors that do it... and I think that speaks volumes that it is effective because why would you spend your time using a program that you didn’t think was helping,” Renner said. “We’ve never had a student that came here that didn’t improve significantly. Every kid that I’ve ever seen here they really want to improve and their parents really want them to improve.”

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Renner and Porter’s mother both said that they know Porter’s future is going to be bright. The Walch family wants to see Dr. Hurford’s program expanded to help more students earn the proper care that Porter has deserved.

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“People do know about us but we’re still kind of a hidden gem in some respect, but that’s pretty much all we can handle.” Satellite offices are being considered in Tulsa and Overland Park, and may soon become a reality.

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“What I’m really the most proud about is that through science we have been able to solve a very serious problem, because kids who have dyslexia, if they don’t get the correct support, they’re not going to learn how to read, they’re going to drop out of school, and there’s a lot of problems that come from that,” Hurford said.

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“With the appropriate instruction designed for his specific learning disability, Porter is learning, Mrs. Walch said.  “I told Dr. Hurford it's been an absolute miracle.  He informed me that it’s just actually science.  Either way, we have hope again.”

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 If you like kids, and you’re willing to learn the tutoring procedures and you want to work hard to see how kids can improve their reading skills, check out the READing Center in Whitesitt Hall room 209.