Megan had the good fortune of having the same teacher for both kindergarten and second grade. Just 10 days into second grade, Megan’s teacher requested a parent-teacher conference. “She saw zero progress from Megan’s kindergarten days,” says her father. It prompted him to take immediate action. When told that a realistic timeline for an educational plan would be 18 months, he hired a private child psychologist, the nationally renowned Dr. Ruth Peters, to provide them with an action plan. The investment paid off — within two weeks Megan had a preliminary diagnosis of dyslexia and an education action plan that laid out the remainder of her elementary education.
If you ask Megan what it means to have dyslexia, she says “my way of writing sounds correct in my head.” But, she adds, “I look at the confused faces of the people reading what I write and I know they don’t understand what I’m trying to say.” It also affects her ability to read out loud; as a result, she would often sit in the back of the classrooms so no one would notice her.
Megan attended an elementary school focused exclusively on services for students with learning disabilities and ADHD. She was coached on memorizing techniques and flourished with the small classes and extra attention. However, since that school only enrolled students through eighth grade, she graduated from a small private Christian high school that offered an individualized program and small classes. Unable to pass the ACT, she stopped looking at colleges altogether.
Her father and stepmother, however, discovered Beacon College. When Megan visited, she recognized immediately that it offered many services similar to those at her LD-exclusive elementary school. She was most attracted to Beacon’s small environment, its Center for Student Success, and the people she met. As a Beacon student, Megan was nominated by her professors to become a peer tutor and a teaching assistant for a number of psychology and human services courses.
Her goal is to graduate in May 2018 with a B.A. in psychology. She plans to pursue graduate studies in the field of psychology, with plans for a career working with troubled teens.
