Nancy K.

Certified Tutor

One of my most profound joys comes from guiding learners in the process of accelerating growth, closing academic gaps, and believing in themselves. Ensuring their future success is more than a passion for me: It is my mission.

I received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Special Education from West Chester University and a Master of Arts in Administration, Supervision, Curriculum Planning, and Instruction from Georgian Court University. Throughout my teaching career, I have also engaged in numerous training and research opportunities. Most recently, I took a course entitled "Penn Literacy Network 1" as well as several additional educational workshops from the University of Pennsylvania.

My philosophy of teaching is that educators must ensure each learner is reaching his/her full potential by attending to "the whole child". In addition to providing excellent academic instruction, teachers must also address the social and emotional needs of students and create exciting learning environments where they are eager to learn and participate. Instructionally, I believe in the use practices that are research-based and rooted in Universal Design. This includes multi-sensory, hands-on, mnemonic, and metacognitive approaches that address the needs of individuals of various learning styles and ability levels. It is also my strong belief that educators must provide well-planned, explicit instruction as well as highly engaging co-constructive learning opportunities that build critical thinking skills, encourage lifelong learning, and pave the way for future success. I work tirelessly to ensure that I uphold all of these values while maintaining a high spirited, engaging, supportive, and motivating learning environment. In reporting on my teaching performance, principals have used descriptors such as: "Mrs. Berodyn takes her students on a journey of excitement and exploration.", "The success rate of her students in high.", and "She is a model for teachers to emulate."

My prior experience includes 28 wonderful years as a resource room teacher in New Jersey. I taught in K-5 whole group, inclusionary classrooms as well as in small group, individualized settings for learning disabled students. My passion and dedication was recognized there with a "Teacher of the Year Award" and a listing in Who's Who Among America's Teachers. After moving to Pennsylvania, I also had the great pleasure of teaching for 5 years as a Basic Skills Instructional Aide, providing targeted tutoring to individuals and small groups of kindergarten through 6th grade students. In both career experiences, the goal of my instruction was to inspire a love of learning, increase student skills, and close achievement gaps in reading, writing, spelling and math.

Currently, I tutor in reading, writing, spelling, and math for students in kindergarten through 4th grade as well as adult literacy. Although I truly enjoy teaching all of these subject areas, I am most passionate about reading. Because it is most critical to the future success of my students, I have engaged in extensive literacy research and received training in a number of multi-sensory and specialized reading program (such as Wilson, Lindamood-Bell, Preventing Academic Failure, SRA Reading Mastery, Stevenson, Reading Recovery, and Corrective Reading). I take great pride and joy in knowing that I have helped hundreds of students overcome significant reading difficulties.

When I am not tutoring, I enjoy spending time with my family, reading, hiking, cooking, listening to music, playing guitar, and taking pictures!