Affect Academics is a full-service center for targeted learning interventions that propel students on to greater success in school . . . and beyond.
Affect Academics embraces the Universal Design for Learning framework, which advocates flexible learning environments designed to accommodate individual learning differences and profiles in children who need assistance in math, reading, or other subjects.
Founded in 2009, Affect Academics is led by Cristina Post, Ed.M., an experienced math and science teacher, adjunct professor, and the first recognized Educational Therapist in Maine. We have dedicated classroom facilities in South Freeport, Maine, to serve students from area schools, homeschoolers, and children and their families referred by educators, speech therapists, vision therapists, occupational therapists, and others. We also now offer virtual services to students from all over New England.
Cristina Post, EdM, ET/P is an experienced math and science teacher and the only professional level educational therapist in the state of Maine. She has taught every grade from K-12, and since 2006 has been working as a math specialist with an emphasis on middle school math, including curriculum design.
Cristina has also taught at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts, where she facilitated a graduate-level course for public school teachers on Universal Design for Learning with CAST.org.
She has presented her research on the cognitive effects of math anxiety at Harvard Graduate School of Education, to the Association of Educational Therapists, and to the Association of Teachers of Mathematics in New England, and she has also given talks at schools throughout New England, both public and private, on the relevance of recent research in neuroscience to education.
Cristina is a certified Professional level educational therapist with the Association of Educational Therapists, holds a Master’s degree in Mind, Brain, and Education from Harvard Graduate School of Education, a K-8 Waldorf teaching certificate from Antioch New England Graduate School, and a bachelor’s in genetics and creative writing from Cornell University, summa cum laude.
Cristina specializes in understanding how education can support healthy brain development.
She is a member of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the Association of Educational Therapists.
Affect Academics is rooted in Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which advocates flexible learning environments to accommodate individual learning differences. Far from mere homework help or tutoring, Affect Academics seeks to create a comprehensive support plan for students that includes in-session work, at-home strategies, and whenever possible, in-school strategies.
Therapeutic education recognizes the central role of emotion in learning. Happier, empowered students learn more effectively and enjoy better long-term outcomes.
The children we serve are often experiencing a mismatch with their current learning environments, resulting in diagnoses of LD, ADHD, or emotional upset such as anxiety. We not only help them with their academics, we also give them coping skills that they can apply on a daily basis.
Our approach is to observe and evaluate students from an abilities perspective. Once we understand a child’s strengths, we can identify specific coping skills he or she needs and collaborate with parents, teachers, and others to design a comprehensive plan to support learning at home, in school, and in our academic support sessions.
Our goal is for students to experience lasting change in their cognitive capabilities. Children who understand their learning styles from a strengths-based perspective go on to become effective lifelong learners.
Emily Walsh (Mindful Learning and Executive Function Coach)
Having been an integral part of Affect Academics for over five years, Emily remains passionate about Affect’s mission and is excited to continue growing and learning alongside each student who comes her way. In her role as office manager, Emily is often the first person you’ll meet at Affect, and her internal calm in the face of dozens of conflicting schedules really comes through in her work offering individualized sessions in Mindful Learning and Executive Function Skills coaching. She creates personalized plans for each student and works to assist in managing academic stress throughout the journey of growing up.
In 2013, she received her Bachelor’s degree in Mind and Body Wellness from New York University. There she studied everything from ballet and creative arts therapy to Buddhist psychology and cognitive neuroscience, all in order to learn how to become her best self and to teach others how to reach their potential. Recently, under the guidance of Peg Dawson at the University of Southern Maine, she began her journey as an Executive Function Skills Coach. Emily’s greatest passion is observing and enjoying how the mind and the body work as one, through dance, yoga, meditation, and poetry.
Bernadette Esposito (High School Math and Language Arts) is a writer and a teacher of writing, English, and math with more than 20 years of experience at both secondary and collegiate levels. In addition to teaching, she has developed writing curriculum for engineering, art, and English education programs in California, Iowa, Wyoming, and Maine and has served as a panelist at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference on topics such as Writing Voice as Emancipation and Participation in a Democratic Society and Teaching Essays of Resistance in Rural America. She has helped lead a research team on a project called “Traversing Parallel Lines,” in which underrepresented high school geometry students in rural Iowa and urban Boston solve problems and articulate concepts through letter writing.
As a long-time yoga instructor, she brings the practice of mindfulness, movement, and breath work to a variety of teaching contexts and has seen first-hand its benefits on creativity and cognition. She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa and degrees in both English and math. She teaches writing and math in the Honors Program at the University of Southern Maine.
Sarah Hotham (K-8 Reading and Math Specialist) Sarah is a certified Special Education and English as a Second Language teacher. She has worked in a special education day treatment setting for 7 years teaching elementary and middle school students with emotional and behavioral disabilities. In this setting, she gained experience planning and implementing literacy interventions concentrating on phonics, fluency and comprehension. Sarah has also planned and implemented math and math interventions focusing on fluency, computation and concept application. Her math lessons use the concrete, representational, abstract model to help students gain a more solid understanding. She is currently training in the methods used by Affect Academics.
As an educator, Sarah feels it is important to balance students’ social and emotional needs with their educational needs. Her goal as a teacher and tutor is for her students to feel confident and have fun as learners.
Sarah lives in New Gloucester with her terrier pup, Kiki. She loves to read, garden and hike. She practices yoga and mindfulness, which she thinks are important concepts to bring into all learning environments.
Julia Ridge (Reading Tutor) is a certified Orton Gillingham (OG) reading and spelling tutor, with over 100 hours of practicum and 50 hours of classroom work in the OG method of reading and spelling. She comes to us from the Children’s Dyslexia Center of Portland. In addition to her OG training, Julia has been a volunteer tutor at the Literacy of Volunteers for Greater Portland and a reader in a preschool literacy program sponsored by the United Way. She is currently training in the Lindamood-Bell method of reading intervention. Julia is not taking new clients at this time.
Being involved in literacy has been extremely gratifying for Julia: “I love to see my students progress and gain confidence in reading and spelling. Everyone should be able to read with confidence. Everyone should be able to call themselves a reader. To see my students find their strengths and believe in those strengths is what is most rewarding.”
Julia lives in Portland, Maine with her husband and Labrador retriever. She has two adult children. She received her MFA in creative writing from the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing program at the University of Southern Maine and is a freelance writer.
