“And.” “But.” “The.” They seem like the simplest of words. But when Megan Loutzenheimer looked at those words, her stomach began to tighten into a knot. Megan had no hook on which to hang those words. Every time she looked at them, it was as if she was seeing them for the first time.

Loutzenheimer has severe dyslexia, a learning disability that takes many, many forms. She's certainly not alone. Well-known people with varying degrees of dyslexia include Charles Schwab and Jay Leno.
 
Ten years ago, her disability might have condemned her to a life of struggle and frustration. But that won't be the case with Megan. Diagnosed early-in the first grade-she received help from Lee Pesky Learning Center. She learned to associate different words with pictures. And with repetition she became able to recall words much more quickly than she used to. “It's made all the difference in the world,” said Megan's mother Gayl Loutzenheimer. “There's only a limited number of centers like this in the United States so we are so fortunate we have something like this here.”

Lee Pesky Learning Center was founded by Ketchum residents Alan and Wendy Pesky in honor of their late son Lee, who was confounded much of his life by a learning disability. The Pesky's opened the first center in Boise in 1997. They opened a second center-the Janet Shafran Campus-in Hailey behind the Community Campus several months ago. And they plan to open yet another center in Ketchum in the Wood River YMCA when it opens next fall. In 10 years the non-profit center, which offers scholarships to about half its clients, has grown to 30 employees.

“We're not only in the business of affecting lives but in some cases even saving lives,” said Alan Pesky. “More than 80 percent of those in prison, for instance, have some sort of learning disability. If they had been caught earlier, it's possible they may not have resorted to the behavior that got them in prison.”

Ironically, Gayl Loutzenheimer, who has a background in education, was serving on the board of Lee Pesky Learning Center when she realized her daughter was not reading at the level she should have been reading. Schoolteachers resisted her pleas that Megan, who was in first grade at the time, be tested. “Just let her develop and she'll be fine,” they told Loutzenheimer. But Gayl insisted and her suspicions were borne out. Megan was diagnosed with one of the most severe cases of dyslexia the educators had ever diagnosed among first-graders.

“She's no dummy. She can convert a graph in her head-something that would be useful if she were to become an architect,” said Gayl. “But, because she has difficulty reading, one of her classmates told her soccer team that Megan was the dumbest student in their class. “Fortunately, the Pesky tutors have been able to help her realize that even though she can't learn in the conventional way she can learn by other means. They've shown her what her strengths are and they've showed her tools to use to be successful in areas where she's not as strong.”

A win-win partnership
About 14 percent of the students in the Blaine County School District have been diagnosed with varying degrees of learning disabilities, said Mary Gervase, assistant superintendent for the school district. The Pesky Center can prove invaluable for many of those students-especially “in between” children who do not qualify for special education. “They can provide alternative testing assessments and more in-depth tutoring than we're able to provide between 8 and 3:30 every day. Plus, they provide professional development for our teachers, teaching literacy strategies and other strategies for success,” she said.

The Pesky Center administers follow-up tests rigorously so that everything they do is based on empirical research, said Nick Goodman, education team director. Post-testing shows most students improve 1 and 1/2 to 2 and 1/2 grade levels after the completion of the first remediation program.

Among them, a third-grader who couldn't read because she couldn't recognize vowels or identify consonants. This made it difficult for her to put together sounds like c-a-t. She also had an inability to retrieve information. She knew, for instance that she was reading a book in class but couldn't remember the name. “Sarah Plain and Tall” became “something about Sarah being plain.” Her tutor showed her how to group “lip popping” consonants like “b” and “p,” and had her make those sounds while looking in the mirror. She had the little girl write a word in salt with her fingers while saying the word. She gave her mnemonics like “Never eat soggy waffles” to help her remember the directions on the compass. And she taught her to remember what she'd just read by creating maps and drawing pictures of her subjects to create a visual connection.

Games, games and more games
No one knows the exact causes of learning disabilities, said Goodman. And there is no cookie cutter approach-all must be dealt with differently.

Sandy Mauro, who works in the Hailey Center, has a variety of help at her fingertips, including recordings and rhyming, word scramble and strategy games. There's even a game that looks like “Sorry” but forces its players to focus on such things as suffixes and prefixes, determining whether words like dis-heat and re-heat are real words, in order to make their way around the board. “Our kids tend to be very good with visual clues,” said Mauro, who doubles as a reading teacher at Woodside Elementary. “And games are very motivating.”

Given the remedies the Pesky Center has, there's no reason that a kid should sit in school and say, “I'm stupid,” said David Holmes, executive director of the Center. Holmes was a headmaster for a prep school back East before moving to the Wood River Valley. But, he says, he was painfully late in getting his own son help for attention deficit disorder. Holmes said he first began to notice his son was getting frustrated in junior high school but the boy didn't get testing and help until high school. Thankfully, Holmes said, his son is now 28 and successfully using the organizational coping tools he learned to work in the grants office at UCLA. “That's an area where you have to be perfect-there's no room for errors. So I'm really proud of what he's done with the help he got,” Holmes said. “And I don't want to see any other child denied that help.”

To hear more...
David Holmes, executive director of the Lee Pesky Learning Center, will present a free overview of Lee Pesky Learning Center at 6 p.m. Thursday, May 3rd at The Community Library.