Celebrating Student Achievement at the Children’s Dyslexia Centers

from The Northern Light Fall 2022

Around the Jurisdiction

by Jocelyn Wallace Grant Writer and Coordinator

Cover Photo: 2022 Celebration of Achievement - Children’s Dyslexia Center of the Great Lakes

Every summer, hundreds of Children’s Dyslexia Center (CDC) students graduate from the program in local ceremonies known as Celebrations of Achievement. While dyslexia cannot be cured (so a student never truly “graduates” from the condition), these ceremonies serve as an important reminder of how hard these students have worked to overcome reading challenges.

Most students graduate from the program after two and a half years of one-on-one support from their tutor. Because of the challenges and stigma surrounding dyslexia, many children enter the program afraid and skeptical. However, over the course of hundreds of hours spent together, students and tutors begin to build trust and understanding rooted not only in the progress they have made in reading, but also through sharing their hobbies, interests, and how they have grown as an individual. For both the child and tutor, this bond can make Celebrations of Achievement bittersweet as they prepare to say goodbye.

More than 900 children are expected to graduate from the program this year.

Gia Kiley, a tutor at the Children’s Dyslexia Center of Madison, is no stranger to this feeling. In 2019, she began working one-on-one with Nate, a severely dyslexic child afraid to raise his hand in the classroom. Speaking at his Celebration of Achievement just two years later, voice brimming with emotion, Gia shared, “He is such an incredibly calm, hardworking, funny, amazing student. After a while, we started reading this gigantic book, and we would switch off page by page. He would get lost in the story and forget to switch it back to me, and I didn’t tell him. I said to him near the end of our time together, ‘You don’t need me anymore.’ It makes me sad, but it makes me proud. He’s going to go far in life.”

**Children's Dyslexia Center of Western Pennsylvania**

The relationship between tutors and their students is uniquely valuable and leaves a lasting impact. When asked about his two years at the Center and his experience working with Gia, Nate shared, “I just want to say I love it. It helped me a lot. And I have to say I’m also really sad to leave. We’ve built this relationship; we’ve worked every week—twice a week—and it’s going to be hard saying goodbye. But I’m also really proud of myself and Gia and how great a tutor she is.”

Because of the challenges and stigma surrounding dyslexia, many children enter the program afraid and skeptical.

More than 900 children are expected to graduate from the program this year, having developed grade level reading skills that will serve them throughout their lives.

Thanks to the generous support of members, the Children’s Dyslexia Centers are helping to bring communities together through tutorstudent mentorship. These bonds are born in the classroom but are never more apparent than at a Center’s Celebration of Achievement where students, tutors, and their families come to together to laugh and cry as students embark on the next chapter of their life.