Tutoring makes the difference

WHEN MONTEARA Johnson heard she was going to a "tutoring place" for dyslexics, her heart sank.

She was 10 years old, had a history of academic failure, had repeated the fourth grade. Monteara had never heard of dyslexia, the reading disorder. When her great-grandmother said she was being referred for tutoring, it confirmed her worst fear. "I thought it was a place where you go when you're stupid."

The other day, Monteara walked breezily into her grandmother's living room in West Baltimore and plopped a Judy Blume novel on the coffee table. At 12, she knows her digraphs and her consonant blends. She knows why "stitch" is spelled that way. Best of all, she'll enter middle school this fall reading at close to grade level.

She flashes a wonderful smile and says, "I know I'm not stupid."

The tutoring place is the Dyslexia Tutoring Program, in which Monteara has been enrolled for two years with tutor Myrna Cardin. Once a week, Monteara makes her way to the Rotunda in North Baltimore, where she and Cardin work in a closet-sized room for 60 to 90 minutes, playing word games and doing handwriting and spelling exercises - gradually unlocking the mysteries of reading.

Throughout the metropolitan area, 113 other children and adults affiliated with the program are working with tutors in libraries, churches and hospitals. The service is free to people from low-income families, and the tutors are volunteers, trained in a 20-hour course in return for agreeing to work in the program for 60 hours.

There's no shortage of clients, says Marcy K. Kolodny, the program's executive director, but there's a perpetual shortage of tutors (who don't have to be teachers). Twenty-nine kids are on a waiting list.

The program was founded in 1982 by a group of public defenders who had noticed the high rate of illiteracy among repeat offenders and suspected it was related to dyslexia, a neurological disorder that's not related to intelligence. The original name given the program, Maryland Associates for Dyslexic Adults and Youth, was changed last year to reflect the changed mission.

But I liked the original acronym, MADAY. Pronounced "Mayday," the international call for help, it reflected the urgency of the task: getting help for people who, through no fault of their own, are in danger of failing at one of the most complex neurological tasks they'll undertake in a lifetime.

Last week, I interviewed four clients in the Dyslexia Tutoring Program and three of their tutors, and I watched two tutoring sessions. A common thread runs through the four stories. In one way or another, all were betrayed during their earlier schooling.

There's Monteara, who's supported by an extended family. Her great-grandmother, Mary Alderman, read about the program in The Sun and got Monteara to the testing all clients must undergo to determine eligibility. (They're also tested every six months while in the program.)

Monteara's grandmother, Fabian Alderman, and her mother, Janice Wilson-Wells, told me they watched in agony, sometimes in tears, as the girl struggled with her homework. They knew she was bright. "She got things," says Monteara's grandmother, "but she just had this problem. When we asked at school, they said she was just a normal child going through normal changes. If we hadn't done anything, they would have passed her all the way through school."

That's what happened to Donald Scott, known as D. J. Now 15, Donald is the veteran of the program; he's "graduated" after more than eight years of instruction by four tutors. It became obvious in first grade that D. J. wasn't learning to read, says his mother, Nettie Scott. "They told us boys mature later, and not to worry."

It's taken the better part of a decade, Scott says in her living room in Arbutus, "but D. J. will graduate next year with the ability to read. My husband is from a family of 10 children, and only three can read. This is truly a gift to him."

Migrating from school to school diminishes the chances that a learning deficiency such as dyslexia will be discovered and addressed. Shaneka Johnson, who lives with her mother in Northeast Baltimore, is an example. Shaneka, 13, was promoted from grade to grade in three schools until a teacher finally identified the problem. By then, she was attending Chinquapin Middle School and reading at a third-grade level.

An hour spent with Shaneka and her tutor, Gloria Epstein, makes it obvious that the girl is as bright as her sparkling blue nails. "She has excellent comprehension skills," Epstein says. "Her problem lies in her decoding skills, but she's making good progress. The biggest change is in her confidence. When we started last year, she wouldn't read if anything appeared hard. Now there isn't anything she wouldn't try."

Like Monteara, Shaneka and D. J., Angela Horn is learning the short and long vowels, the open and closed syllables. One difference: Horn, of North Baltimore, is a 28-year-old divorced mother of three who dropped out of the ninth grade at Northwestern High School in part because she could neither read nor write.

"When I was in the fourth grade, a teacher told my mother that I was never going to learn, and I overheard it," says Horn.

Horn's tutor, Diana Schramm, works to build self-confidence as well as skills. "This is a smart woman, smart in life's attitudes," Schramm says, "and she's a joy to work with."

Kolodny, the dyslexia program's executive director, took on the job a year and a half ago and immediately set about raising funds, her area of expertise. Although the tutors are volunteers, there are employees and psychologists to be paid, supplies to be purchased and rent at the Rotunda to be paid. Last year the program spent $260,000.

Kolodny figures it costs $2,500 a year to tutor one child. People are invited to sponsor a child for a year, receiving in return a couple of letters. She's also planning a Dyslexia Awareness Week this fall in conjunction with the Baltimore Book Festival. Actor Henry Winkler, who is dyslexic, has been invited to speak.

But Kolodny says she took on the job for a greater purpose than raising dollars.

"We have a wonderful product to sell, teaching people to read. What better gift?"

The Dyslexia Tutoring Program is at The Rotunda, Suite 310, 711 W. 40th St., Baltimore. Information: 410-889-5487.