Learning how to learn

The Reading Group in Urbana celebrates 25 years of teaching. -by Ruth Gerlach News-Gazette Staff Writer

The Reading Group is building on a quarter of a century of experience and development.

Now ensconced in a suite of bright rooms in the lower level of Lincoln Square in Urbana, the nonprofit reading clinic offers testing and instruction for youngsters with learning disabilities and learning problems.

The Reading Group traces its origins to a pilot program offered by the Urbana School District in the summer of 1972.

Marilyn Kay, now the director emerita of The Reading Group, had completed a master's degree a few years earlier with a specialty in dyslexia, a disability that makes learning to read difficult. Learning disabilities were not well understood then, and interest in them was just beginning to develop.

That summer, Kay was hired by the school district to work with a dozen children, around 8 to 10 years old, who had difficulty reading. "Pilot programs don't always take hold, especially if they are expensive," she noted. "This is expensive. Individualized help always is. But I think it's also very effective."

Although the district did not continue the program, she decided it was worthwhile. She rented space in the First Presbyterian Church of Urbana the following summer to offer the program independently.

That's how The Reading Group began.

Its roots, however, go back even farther.

Kay's interest in learning disabilities stems from personal experiences.

"I have dyslexia," she said, and recalled a school reunion where she met up with her first-grade teacher. When the teacher heard that Kay is the director of a reading clinic, her mouth fell open in amazement.

Kay asked her, "Do you remember what a tough time I had with reading?" The teacher replied, "Oh, yes, I remember. You kept having so much trouble with reading and I didn't understand why."

When she was a child, Kay noted, "There was no person out there who could help me." However, she said, " I am basically a problem solver and a determined person. At a certain point, I think I found some good ways to overcome it."

She became a teacher herself and, while teaching, found herself stumped by a child with a learning disability.

He was a second-grader in Princeton, N.J., and could not read at all. Kay worked with him, but to no avail. Finally, the child's mother decided to take him out of school each afternoon and take him to the Middlesex Hospital Reading Clinic at New Brunswick, N.J.

"I was furious with her. I thought, 'If anybody can teach this kid, I can'" Kay said. "Well, after about three weeks there was a breakthrough. He started to read. He started to write. He learned to spell."

So, Kay contacted the clinic and said, "Show me what you do."

There, she was introduced to multisensory methods of teaching children with learning disabilities.

After she moved to Urbana and after a total of 11 years as a classroom teacher, she decided to get her master's degree. Since that first summer pilot program, she has been using what she learned to help children and adults overcome learning disabilities.

She continued teaching at the First Presbyterian Church of Urbana for several summers. During the school year she taught children after school in rooms set up in her basement. She and two women in her neighborhood -Lou Brown of Urbana, who taught reading comprehension, and the late Mary Hart, who worked with children who had difficulty writing- worked somewhat as a team, refferring students to each other.

In 1976 and early 1977, Kay was approached by the Champaign-Urbana AMBUCS with a proposal to start a reading clinic for children with learning disabilities. They had $6,000 to devote to the project.

Kay said, "They described their plan and I gave them ideas and I said, 'Oh yes. This is exactly what the community needs.' Then I said that I wasn't the person to do this. I just didn't feel that I was ready for it at the time."

The AMBUCS found other projects for those funds. However, they had started Kay thinking about what it would be like to manage a business that would teach people with learning disabilities.

She said, "One year later I borrowed $6,000 - they knew just about how much it would cost to get started - and opened up a storefront in Urbana."

She, Brown, Hart and several other specialists called themselves The Reading Group and worked out of a storefront at the corner of Washington and Race streets, near Urbana High Scool, for three years. With the passage of a federal law in 1978 that guaranteed free and appropriate education for all children with learning disabilities, they found themselves in great demand as presenters of workshops at area schools.

Kay is now considering sources for grants that will allow The Reading group to explore new options.

In addition, she is working to build a strong and dedicated staff with more full-time, rather than part-time employees.

She said, "I'm getting to an age where I want to feel that The Reading Group will always be here. I'd like to continue. I'd like it to become indispensible."

Just the Facts on Reading Group

*Offerings: One-on-one instruction for people with learning disabilities is available in such areas as reading, handwriting, organization, study skills, test taking skills, spelling, reading comprehension and phonics. The Reading Group also sponsors an annual children's art and creative writing exposition, presents workshops for teachers and has a Homework Helper Program and an Information Center. An early childhood program for children ages 3 to 6 will start this fall.

*Staff: In addition to Marilyn Kay, the director, the staff includes eight part-time teachers, associates who provide diagnostic testing and other assistance, and an office manager.

*Students: More than 100 students enroll in summer programs. During the school year, about 100 students enroll in after-school and Saturday programs. Most live in Champaign-Urbana and the surrounding area. One student each came all the way from Taiwan and France to receive services.

*Costs: $500 for 10 one-hour, one-on-one sessions. Costs for diagnostic testing, $95.

*Financial aid: Scholarships are available through a general scholarship fund as well as through the Turning Point Scholarship Program, which is aimed at children who are at risk for anger against themselves and against society because of their difficulty with reading and attention deficit disorder.

Marilyn Kay, director of The Reading Group, does not subscribe totally to one particular teaching method.

"What finally evolved is a system where I can pick and choose for each individual child," she said.

She does use a multisensory approach with many children, since children with learning disabilities often have auditory or visual confusion. With a multisensory approach, Kay said, "They're feeling it, they're seeing it, and they're hearing it, and that seems to help in some way."

Stephanie Cobb,12, of Champaign, found the multisensory instruction helpful. She was enrolled in The Reading Group a couple of times, once during the summer and once during the school year.

She particularly liked exercises associating three-dimensional objects with sounds, such as an apple to represent the short "a" sound or a ball to represent the sound "b." She also learned techniques that she said were helpful, such as "finger spelling," which involves spelling out loud while raising a thumb or finger for each letter in a word.

She likes the computer programs that she encountered at The Reading Group and that her father has now installed on their home computer.

Mary Petry, a learning disabilities teacher at Dr. Howard School in Champaign who taught Stephanie in the past, said she sometimes recommends The Reading Group as an option for her students. She has seen children use techniques at school that they learned at The Reading Group.

"Whenever children use a strategy that has been suggested there, you know that it's helping them," Petry said.

She added, "They do a really nice job of communicating with the schools so that the program does carry over."

"Reproduced by permission of The Champaign-Urbana News Gazette. Permission does not imply endorsement by the newspaper." Articles published in The Champaign-Urbana News Gazette, August 22, 1997.