Isn’t there a faster way?

I’ve used The Barton System with over 30 students during these last 17 years. The quickest student I’ve had was a high schooler who completed all 10 books in as little as 2 years, and I have a student working on year 7.5. The average of my students has been 3.5 years. It’s an investment in time and money to be sure. The severity of the dyslexia is another factor affecting the speed, as I move at the pace of their mastery.

Recently, I took a student with prior Barton work, and after post testing this student at the required mastery percentage of skills for B3, I determined she was ready to proceed with where she’d left off in B4. And we were off. Developing relationship, conquering skills and making it happen.

Within weeks, I was emailed with an explanation that a newer curriculum (about 10 years now) was promising faster results. I hadn’t had personal experience with this program, so I started research at their website. I learned it wasn’t Orton/Gillingham based, so that concerned me as much has been researched over 100 years and O/G based curriculum is considered BEST practice with the dyslexic brain. I then went to forums I’m a part of and researched there. Additionally, I messaged a colleague. Both those sources were saying, yes, this can help with reading faster than Barton, but there isn’t research to suggest that dyslexics can respond well to this instruction. AND it doesn’t really address spelling.

I politely explained all of those findings to dad in a reply to his email, however he felt led this was what would be best. I assured him I’d be here if there was a need to change back and wished them well.

The rub for me in this is that this program was/is clearly working. The child was retaining/owning the material she learned, a tutors optimal result! But, yes, it is time consuming. It’s my goal to make that clear at consultation meetings so parents fully understand all the information. It was my personal experience with each of my 3 children. And I feel this program has served them well as they are now independent, fully functioning adults.

I read a book with each new student, “The Tortoise and the Hare” and my business mascot is the tortoise/turtle. I gift a turtle to them after the story and ask them to place it where they do their school work. My emphasis with them going forward is “we’re slow and accurate, not fast and wrong”. And it’s a call back frequently when working together. Some turtles that have joined my collection are gifts from students they bought or made. They can’t all fit in this shelf right now, a good problem to have because I THINK they are helping my students to understand the point.

Slow and steady wins the race. I think it still holds.

The turtles that help the kids SSSSLLLLLLOOOOOWWWWW down. They all have names and students choose them when we read together to be slow and accurate.