I want to tell you about my professional training and experiences that led to my decision to develop the educational readiness service,LEARNING JUMPSTART. I have two Master’s degrees in speech/language pathology and special needs learning. I also have twenty five years experience working in the public schools. I’ve worked as a special needs preschool teacher and director, special needs language consultant, speech/language pathologist, and early education specialist/consultant. I’ve written a published book of language/academic activities, Holidays for Learning, and co-authored an article that was published in Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools. In that article, we discussed the successful results of a vocabulary and phonemic awareness development research project conducted with kindergarten and first grade children in a central Phoenix school district. As the coordinator of the treatment component of that program, I developed language and phonemic awareness curricula and used those materials, in collaboration with teachers, to significantly increase the vocabulary and phonemic awareness abilities of kindergarten and first grade children in the Osborn Unified School District.

While working in that capacity and in all other positions I’ve held in the public schools, I noticed an alarming number of students entering school without the necessary language and educational readiness skills needed to succeed academically. Although, according to district guidelines, these young children often qualified for minimal or no special needs services, they certainly did NOT possess the needed skills to progress adequately in the school system, as it was designed, and were at great risk for the development of academic difficulties. Before finally qualifying for special language or academic help, these children often experienced years of academic struggle and pain as they witnessed an ever increasing gap between their academic abilities and those of their peers. The necessary resources for direct service intervention for this large population were very limited.

After much frustration with my inability to effectively serve young children within this system, I concluded that I needed to find a way to help children unlock their learning potential BEFORE they experienced the pain of an unsuccessful struggle to maintain the academic pace of their peers. I thought about my specialty in the area of speech, language, and educational readiness; I thought about the significant number of students entering schools unprepared; I thought about the academic nature of kindergarten programs today, and the answer became clear. LEARNING JUMPSTART was conceived as the vehicle for providing these early intervention services.