I am qualified and experienced in a variety of different areas of special educational needs. Starting off my career as an occupational therapist and working with children with dyspraxia, I realised how many of them had difficulties with literacy too. This inspired me to train to teach adults and children with dyslexia, which I continue to do. I later became a speech and language therapist, gaining insight into the relationship between spoken and written language and the way they influence each other. I have worked with primary and secondary aged children, in schools in the UK and in other parts of the world too. I have been the Literacy Co-ordinator in a school for children with specific learning difficulties (SpLDs) and trained there to become a diagnostic assessor for SpLD/dyslexia. I have twice held Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator positions, most recently as part of the Senior Leadership Team in a trilingual school in Lisbon. Over the past 25 years, I have supported children who have struggled with maths for a variety of different reasons e.g. difficulties in related areas such as language, working memory or speed of processing, or because of a weakness in their sense of number (a key area of difficulty in dyscalculia). My MSc research project was on the relationship between number sense and linguistic development.

The unusual breadth of my professional experience is a great advantage for making connections between challenges people may have in different areas of their life or education, for understanding underlying causes and for identifying strategies to help.

I aim for my teaching and therapy sessions to be relaxed and enjoyable, but also motivating and effective. I help each individual understand their strengths as well as their challenges, to become confident and successful in their learning.