Yesterday after my daughter’s evening virtual small group session, I got this text from her Redwood instructor:

Super awesome session with your daughter today! She read way more than she has ever read before. She also wrote more than I’ve seen from her.

It was a short text but it felt so huge. This is working.

It hasn’t been an easy transition for our family. We struggle to stay organized with two working parents with job schedules that shift month to month. We both travel for work quite a bit which disrupts the family rhythm if we aren’t really intentional. She works so hard all day long in her public 1st grade classroom and often comes home exhausted. Neighborhood friends arrive at our door at 5:00 pm ready to play and it’s so hard to say no when playing outside with friends is one of her all-time favorite things to do. Some days, a twice-weekly evening commitment feels totally overwhelming.

On other days, it feels like it’s not enough. Shouldn’t we be doing 4-5 days a week instead of 2? I know the higher dosage of intervention, the better. I know the earlier the intervention, the better. Her percentile scores aren’t moving yet, which I don’t expect to see movement on yet, and also sometimes can scare me. Am I not doing enough to support her?

But last night, I felt so proud of the plan that is currently in place for my daughter. And I see it working. It feels like the right balance of prioritizing this support for her while not making it her whole identity. Learning how to read is massively important, don’t get me wrong, but it isn’t everything. My daughter needs hours of playtime with friends to continue developing her social and emotional regulation skills. She needs time after school to work on her cartwheels and splits, a growing passion of hers. She needs time to talk on the phone with her two Grandmas who both live far away. She needs time to cuddle with me on the hammock after we’ve both had a shitty day. She also needs to consistently attend every single tutoring session with Ms. Sara to ensure that she’s getting a frequent enough dosage of intervention for it to be successful.

What’s working for my daughter won’t work for every student. Every student coming into Redowod has a unique learning profile that needs to be taken into consideration. Each parent or guardian has to work with their child to find the right balance that prioritizes the most important things for that specific child in that specific season of their life.

However, I am so proud of Redwood’s twice-weekly model that provides best-in-class reading remediation in a format that is accessible to a really wide range of families. That is unique in the reading remediation space and something that I believe in with my whole heart.

And it’s working! I see the progress documented in Ms. Sara’s monthly email updates. My daughter is attempting to read words (and sometimes succeeding) on chapstick tubes and school forms that she could not access at all even three months ago. We’ve gotten into a family rhythm that supports her attendance at her sessions. And we have a huge stash of Skittles that only she gets to eat and only during tutoring sessions (I highly recommend this hack!). She is stealing sticky notes from my desk to leave notes around the house that are starting to include words I can read. Remediation is a journey, and she’s on it. I’m so proud of her.

In this journey with you all,

Kait