Meet The Team

Dr. Jennifer Petrich offers differentiated remediation of literacy, math, and executive functioning (EF) skills for students with learning challenges, including dyslexia, specializing in those with attention issues, sensory-seeking behaviors, phonological working memory issues, deficits in executive functioning, and autism. Dr. Petrich also offers training in scientific word study, based on orthographic linguistics, that benefits all students, whether they are neurodivergent or neurotypical learners. ​​​​​​​​

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Dr. Petrich started teaching children and adults with dyslexia almost 25 years ago but has been interested in reading and dyslexia since childhood. Her interest stems from having a mother and brother with dyslexia and growing up watching their struggles with reading and spelling and how these struggles negatively affected their self-esteem. While in college, Dr. Petrich began working for New Heights Learning Center in Towson, MD, where she was trained in multiple Lindamood-Bell programs over the next six years. 

 

Dr. Petrich then became interested in the neuroscience behind the heterogeneity she observed in her students and decided to attend graduate school at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, where she earned a PhD in Neuroscience. She subsequently worked as a research scientist in labs at both University of California San Diego and San Diego State University, studying many different topics including visual psychophysics, psycholinguistics of deafness and sign language, bimodal bilingualism, and deafness and reading.

 

Dr. Petrich is highly trained in both the Orton-Gillingham approach and the Structured Word Inquiry approach. She currently specializes in working with neurodivergent learners using scientific word study, which helps students understand how structure and meaning interact with phonology in the English writing system.

Sara Lee is a literacy instructor based in Atlanta, Georgia who specializes in writing and grammar instruction. She works with children who have reading and/or writing difficulties, many of whom also have learning challenges, such as dyslexia, ADHD, executive functioning deficits, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, sensory-seeking behaviors, autism, and phonological working memory issues. 

 

Sara holds a Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics from Georgia State University and uses her education in first and second language acquisition to help children reach their literacy goals. She also offers professional development courses in grammar and writing for other literacy professionals, teachers, parents, homeschoolers, and other educators. This PD comes in the form of a 5-week class that offers the basics of English grammar and through private consultations with individuals.

Sara has taught English Language Arts at both the elementary and middle school levels. Additionally, she has created and hosted creative writing camps, English Language Arts small group classes, and has tutored all areas of ELA for over thirteen years.

Sara taught English to multi-language learners, both children and adults, for over sixteen years, specializing in cross-cultural communication and working through the four aspects of English Language instruction: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. In addition to working with native English speakers who struggle with reading and writing, she also currently works with multi-language learners who struggle with all aspects of literacy.

Sara's education is in Literacy Therapy, Structured Word Inquiry, Applied Linguistics, Human Development, and Psychology.

Renée Pinchero is an educator located in Austin, Texas. She holds an undergraduate degree in Linguistics and a Masters of Arts in Education, Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, both from the University of Toronto, Canada. She also holds certification in TESL/TEFL (Teaching English as a Second/Foreign Language).

Renée has almost 25 years teaching experience in a variety of literacy-related programs with a primary focus on critical reading skills and writing composition. She has taught students in Canada, Turkey, Lebanon, and the United States in a range of institutions including refugee camps, high schools, and universities. She has also developed a variety of writing curricula and learning materials to meet specific student needs in formal institutions and informal educational programs.

Most of her experience, however, has been focused on teaching writing and critical literacy to first year college students at several universities in Chicago and Austin.  Many of her current college students struggle with ADHD and dyslexia, so Renée has worked to adapt her teaching in a way that challenges students intellectually while accommodating their learning needs.

After watching several immediate family members struggle with dyslexia, ADHD, spelling and disabilities in written expression, Renée found her way to SWI, which brought her educational background and teaching experience full circle. She joined Literacy Dr. in 2020.

Brad Johnson has worked in the field of education for the past twenty-one years and is based in Southwest Ohio. He holds an undergraduate degree in Elementary Education and a Master's in Educational Leadership, including his administrator's license.

While working as a classroom teacher and an instructional coach, Brad found his true passion in developing lessons that helped underserved populations access literacy and math instruction. In his roles as curriculum director and adjunct professor, he has coached and provided professional development to hundreds of teachers working with urban and minority populations and students with language-based learning disabilities. As building administrator, he designed systems and processes to assist teachers in guiding their work with these same students. Brad's search for "what works" has included executive functioning, metacognition, mathematical reasoning, and social-emotional learning.

This same quest for "what works" with students led him to Structured Word Inquiry (SWI). His deep dive into the "truth about the English writing system" led him to the Literacy Dr. and the opportunity to further explore how ALL students learn to read, write and spell.

Dr. Meghan Goldman is an educator and homeschool consultant based in Portland, Oregon. She holds a Master of Arts in Psychology with an emphasis in Clinical Psychology from Pepperdine University. She also holds a PhD in Psychology with an emphasis in Developmental Psychology and Cognitive Sciences from the University of California, Irvine. Her doctoral research and dissertation focused on early language and mathematical development / interventions, as well as executive functioning.

In college, she worked at Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes helping students with dyslexia, ADHD, and other learning difficulties and realized that she may have dyslexia herself. During her Master’s degree, she finally got tested and was officially diagnosed with dyslexia. Being told she was dyslexic brought a huge sense of relief and helped to explain the struggles she faced with reading as a child, the incredible amount of time she spent studying as a student, and the compensatory strategies and persistence she developed throughout the years. It also ignited her desire to conduct research on various aspects of learning. In addition to working on math, language, and executive functioning research for her PhD, she also worked on reading and dyslexia research at Boston Children’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School and the University of Southern California. 

Dr. Goldman was introduced to Structured Word Inquiry as a way to promote her own children’s love of language. As she learned more about SWI, she realized that she had finally found a method of teaching reading and spelling that accurately explained the logic of the English writing system. She is particularly drawn to SWI because of its focus on scientific investigation and on following students’ interests, which are two core values of her own homeschool.

Dr. Goldman has worked with a variety of students of all ages in schools, colleges, and private practice settings, who have incredible abilities and unique challenges. Having struggled with reading herself, she feels a special connection to the students with whom she works. She uses a strengths-based, growth mindset approach to help students learn to flex their perseverance and grit muscles, develop their self-confidence, and focus on their distinct gifts.

Dawn Dockey has over ten years experience as an assistant supporting executives within the Software, Banking and Financial Management industries. ​Dawn received her Bachelor of Arts in Communication Sciences majoring in Speech, Language and Hearing Science from Temple University.

When Dawn began to witness her two children struggle with reading and spelling, she wasn’t surprised. In fact, she has eleven family members spanning four generations who struggle with varying degrees of dyslexia and/or dysgraphia.  Dawn’s surprise instead came with the knowledge that at this point in history, dyslexic children are still not appropriately understood or supported. She joined her state Decoding Dyslexia group and began advocating for her children’s right to a free, appropriate, public education while also seeking to understand all areas of her children’s neurodiversity. 

When popular methods of dyslexia intervention did not accommodate key areas of her children’s profiles, Dawn learned about and began studying Structured Word Inquiry. For one child, the capacity to study words in any area of interest, no matter how narrow, is critical. The equal emphasis placed on phonology, morphology and etymology provides support needed for her other child who although consistently scores above average in phonological processing and phonemic awareness still struggles with reading and writing.
In addition to supporting three Facebook Groups for parents of neurodiverse children, Dawn joined Literacy Dr. in June 2020 to provide administrative support. 
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