Greetings,
My name is Ann Gordon,
and I am the founder and director of Educational Services Associates
(ESA). I want to tell you a bit about who we are and what we do. ESA
is a group practice dedicated to providing individualized remedial and
enrichment experiences for children, adolescents, and adults. Since the
beginning, the group practice format has been at the core of our philosophy.
It enables our carefully selected staff of specialists to provide a unique
blend of interventions that facilitates learning success.
The ESA staff is trained to help students acquire better number sense
or learn calculus; develop phonological awareness, improve reading fluency,
or better understand what they read; and increase confidence about putting
pencil to paper or better communicate their ideas to their readers. In
addition to reading, writing, and mathematics, clients may come to ESA
to learn a foreign language, to study history, to do a unit on science,
or to get help with an online course. Others come because they are anxious
about a particular subject or about taking tests or about going to school
at all. ESA can provide such established programs as Earobics, Fast ForWord,
Slingerland, Read Naturally, and Making Math Real, among others, and
maintains a full complement of educational software. I also serve as
an educational consultant to individuals, families, and schools. In this
capacity, I provide short-term services around a particular problem—for
example, designing strategies for dealing with behavioral or educational
difficulties that affect a client’s learning, or reviewing test
results and making referrals.
ESA clients include students attending private, parochial, or public
schools and clients of any age not enrolled in a regular program. Those
who choose ESA often do so because they are seeking help for an individual
who needs something different from what is offered in traditional tutoring,
because of the complexity of the academic need, contributing emotional
factors, or the depth of the learning issues involved. From 1 to 6 clients
are served on site at any one time, for a total of about 70 service-hours
per week. Clients are seen in one-on-one sessions or in small groups.
They attend from one hour a week to daily, depending on need, in sessions
lasting from one to four hours in length. Clients are seen on site in
facilities that are open from 8:00 AM to 9:00 PM year-round, limited
only by individual staff availability.
We invite persons of all ages with all sorts of academic and learning
needs to contact us. I offer a brief complementary initial telephone
conversation about our services. Following my review of the paperwork
and a family intake, I meet with the specialist who will be working with
the client to arrange an appropriate program and schedule. After services
have begun, the assigned specialist meets with me each week to review,
assess, and modify programming as necessary. To facilitate this entire
process and track student progress, sessions are documented in a custom-designed
database. In keeping with our group practice approach, the whole staff
meets monthly for in-service professional development, to share case
presentations, and to discuss the needs of both students and staff. And
finally, we pride ourselves in providing a warm, supportive environment
in which students and families can feel safe, secure, and connected to
others in our learning community.
Sincerely,
Ann Gordon, PhD, BCET
Board Certified Educational Therapist #10067 |
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