An Educational Consultant works with individuals to identify areas in which they are struggling, and collaborates with the student, parents, and teachers to see what solutions can be made to decrease these challenges. The student, parents, and teachers work together as a team for the student to undergo the best success possible.
Identify Academic Challenges: Listen to how the Student Views the Problem
The Morgan Center is unique in its approach to educational consultation by incorporating our developmental model in identifying student’s needs.
Before teaching students effective study strategies, our program begins with a developmental intake with both parent and student to identify specific areas of need. We believe that how the student perceives the problem provides valuable insight into areas of possible learning disabilities that may be masked by behavioral symptoms such as poor motivation or focus. As an example, consider a teenager who is failing language arts because he refuses to do homework. Developmentally we know that teenagers would rather avoid a difficult task than risk the embarrassment of having his teachers know he cant understand how to do the work. Through careful interviews with both the student and parents we are able to identify if unmotivated behavior might also reflect weaknesses in reading comprehension or other underlying areas of cognitive function.
Collaborative Learning Model: Encourage Confidence and Self-Reliance
Collaborative learning success is related to helping the student explain and elaborate, which develop a student’s ability to reflect, focus and generate a response to the task at hand. This is particularly relevant in developing effective strategies for a student with learning disabilities. All students with or without learning differences all have one essential need which is the foundation for how we work with them: The need to achieve.
Typically students are tutored a subject and given strategies that they have not produced themselves. Therefore, they have no sense of “owning” what they know. In contrast, a collaborative approach has student's generate the answer or even the strategy themselves. The benefits of this learning model are particularly useful when considering individual learning styles and working within a student’s area of strength. For example, students’ with stronger auditory skills but weak visual processing are presented with verbal information (their area of strength) as well as visual information (area of weakness). The educational consultant then helps them to generate information within the verbal or auditory modality while simultaneously building a visual strength. In a sense then the ‘area of strength’ is the template with which to develop new learning skills that are weak. With collaborative guidance, the student gains a sense of ownership as well as the ability to generalize what they know to other situations.
"Felicia is one of those people who goes above and beyond for her clients to ensure they are always getting the very best therapy or service. Felicia is kind, compassionate, and highly ethical. She is top-notch in her profession when it comes to helping families. Without a doubt, I highly recommend Felicia. Clients who have had a chance to work with her are very fortunate!"
- Ann Dolin, Educational Consultant, Award-Winning Author, Public Speaker
