Helping Struggling Readers Thrive: Columbus Teacher Earns Dyslexia Certification

She’s spent more than three decades in education, but Marcy Savoie is still finding ways to grow and to benefit her students.

The Columbus Elementary reading specialist recently completed a year-long program through the Children’s Dyslexia Center in Collinsville, becoming a Certified Dyslexia Practitioner. The program, rooted in the Orton-Gillingham approach, gave her new, research-backed tools to better support students who struggle with reading.

“About two years ago, all of the reading teachers went through a one-week Orton-Gillingham training,” said Savoie. “I just saw how awesome it was, and one week was really just enough to show me I wanted to do more.”

Becky Artime, the district’s literacy coach, told Savoie about the Children’s Dyslexia Center, a charitable organization that offers no-cost dyslexia therapy to families and free training for educators. The Center has more than 40 locations in 13 states, including the one in Collinsville.

“The best thing they do is that it is free to parents—and their training is also free,” she said. “We do a lot of fundraisers, actually, because for the students, they attend twice a week for two years. And that’s about $12,000 that a parent would have probably spent.”

Savoie began the intensive program last summer. In addition to monthly Saturday sessions, she tutored students at the Center twice a week for a full year under the supervision of a certified mentor.

Despite the many hours and long days she put in over the past year, she said the tutoring experience was “very intense, but very rewarding.”

“When you’re one-on-one with a student, and they have a very structured program, the growth you can see is amazing,” Savoie said. “All the students have to have a dyslexia diagnosis when they come in. What’s amazing is that research and neuroscience show the brain is different in students with dyslexia. Typical readers use three parts of the brain, and dyslexic students usually use just one. But with intense training, you can actually see their brain light up in those other areas one or two years later.”

At Columbus, Savoie works with third through fifth graders—the same age group she served during her training.

“The training I did can be for younger students, but most of the students at the Center have been on the waitlist for two years, so they’re older,” she said. “I learned a lot of strategies for older students that are really helpful—like morphology, and working with prefixes, suffixes, roots, all of that.”

Savoie will be entering her 28th year in District #7. Her first 17 were spent as a special education teacher, while she will be entering year 10 as a reading teacher. Before joining the district, Savoie taught in Japan for five years and also worked in adult ESL education.

After a lifetime of teaching, becoming a Certified Dyslexia Practitioner holds special meaning.

“After my training, I feel that I have the skills and knowledge needed to help my students become the best readers they can be,” she said.