No.  At this time there are zero insurance companies that cover educational therapy.  However, many people are able to use money set aside in an HSA for educational therapy.

Possibly. If the testing is recent and comprehensive, we may not need to repeat them.  Cristina can determine if any further evaluations are needed at the initial consult.

Yes. The more information we have, the better.  Cristina is trained to interpret as well as administer standardized tests.  At times, her evaluation may disagree with the results from achievement tests, and at other times, her evaluation will help explain your child’s test scores in the context of his/her learning profile.

Yes. While tutoring is part of educational therapy, it is only one part. We look at how your student learns so that we can target tutoring and include non-cognitive strategies to help your student become a better learner overall. An evaluation also makes our time with your student much more efficient, so that we can accomplish more in a shorter amount of time.

Aetonline.org has some great information to help understand the distinction.

Affect Academics takes a therapeutic approach to education. We ask, “Who is the child and how can we best support him or her academically and emotionally to turn the situation around?”

Tutors are content based. They know their content well and teach it well. Their goal is to help students improve grades and their grasp of a particular subject, such as math or English or social studies.

In contrast, Affect Academics works with students to teach not only the content they need, but provide the tools necessary to move beyond the need for tutoring.

We target learning interventions tailored to a child’s unique learning profile with a focus on bolstering strengths, developing coping skills to compensate for academic weaknesses, and providing techniques for dealing with anxiety and emotional responses that will help the child become a lifelong learner.

Educational Therapists are professionals who combine educational and therapeutic approaches for evaluation, remediation, case management, and communication/advocacy on behalf of children, adolescents, and adults with learning disabilities or learning problems.

Educational Therapists design and implement individualized improvement plans that look at the environment in which a student is functioning, including social, emotional, psychoeducational, and neuropsychological factors.

The Association of Educational Therapists (“AET”) is the national professional association that defines and sets standards for the professional practice of educational therapy.

Affect Academics’ Cristina Post is an Educational Therapist with the Association of Educational Therapists. She has met the AET’s certification requirements, which include holding a Master’s Degree in a field related to educational therapy and completing at least 1,000 hours of related practice.  She is in progress of attaining the level of Professional Educational Therapist (ET/P), which requires substantial additional training.

Cristina is the only Educational Therapist in Maine.

We offer small group classes at a much lower rate. Whether a class is offered or not depends on whether we have enough students to fill it. Much of the time, a child’s needs can be filled with tutoring at school in combination with a class at Affect Academics teaching either coping skills for academic stressors (our Mindful Learning class) or executive function skills. While most of our classes focus on the non-cognitive academic skills that are not available through standard tutoring, we also offer small group classes in beginning reading.

Also, don’t forget about our free initial consult. Even a half hour conversation can point you in the right direction as you seek help for your child.

Payment plans are also available.

Yes. Many of our children have situations that require the safety and comfort of their own homes. However, we have limited availability for in-home therapy, it cannot occur during after school hours, and there is a travel charge.

No, s/he does not. SAT preparation is the exception to the rule around here, as while therapeutic strategies can boost test scores about 10%, SAT content can be taught and does not require an educational therapist. SAT tutoring at Affect Academics includes two sessions with an educational therapist (once at the start and once at the end of tutoring) to teach your student the non-cognitive skills that will give her/him an edge when taking the test, but otherwise, prep work is done with a fully qualified teacher.

Affect Academics can serve the full spectrum of a child’s educational needs from tutoring to educational therapy.

We recognize that determining whether your child simply needs extra help on a particular subject versus a learning intervention can be difficult for families. That’s why we offer a free initial consult so you can discuss your particular needs and concerns with us.

Our ideal clients are families with a desire to change their current situation. They reach out to us because they are looking to fix an academic problem or form an emotional connection with an education professional.

• Your child may have gotten lower than desired SAT scores, is reading below grade level (or not at all), lacks number sense in math (dyscalculia), is getting lower grades than desired, feels anxious around math class/math performance, or have low enjoyment of academics in general.
• Or, as parents, you are seeking a sounding board and guidance from an unbiased, third-party with the training and experience to understand the pros and cons of various approaches and options.

Far from mere homework help, Affect Academic seeks to create a comprehensive support plan that includes in-session work, at-home strategies, and, whenever possible, in-school strategies.

Affect Academics embraces the Universal Design for Learning (“UDL”) framework, which advocates flexible learning environments designed to accommodate individual learning differences and profiles.

Unlike most traditional education settings, where one-size-fits-all approaches are common, UDL recognizes that each individual is unique, with his or her set of skills, needs, and interests, such as . . .

• How we gather facts and categorize what we see, hear, and read.
• How we organize and express our ideas.
• How we get engaged and stay motivated to learn.

Affect Academics uses UDL principles to guide learning interventions, curriculum development, and the support we provide students and their families.

Learn more at National Center on Universal Design for Learning.

Affect Academics’ Cristina Post completed the Mind, Brain, and Education (“MBE”) Master’s program at Harvard Graduate School of Education to expand her understanding of how people learn and what we can do to improve learning.

The program looks at how a child’s learning experiences and his or her environment shape brain and cognitive development, and how learning ultimately affects the brain and its capacities.

With a focus on how biology, emotions, and learning environments affect cognitive development, educators are able to explore what is going on in their classrooms and in their students’ brains so they are better able to create optimal learning environments.

Learn more at Harvard Graduate School of Education Mind, Brain, and Education Program.

When parents or teachers identify a student as struggling in math, reading, or school in general, Affect Academics turns to Learning Interventions as a way to determine what additional support the student may need to reach his or her academic potential.

In a learning intervention, we observe the student in an academic setting (typically at Affect Academics) where we interact through age-appropriate activities and problem solving. We then work with the student, the family, and educators to design and implement a plan that provides individualized instruction tailored exactly to the student’s learning profile and his or her specific strengths and needs.

The goal of a learning intervention is to identify a student’s specific needs and then focus on that student’s strengths, provide ongoing academic support, and teach coping skills to help him or her overcome weaknesses.

Educational Neuroscience is a field of scientific study that brings together researchers in cognition, development, and various educational disciplines to explore how the brain engages in the task of reading, recognizing numbers, and learning and retaining information.

Educators use educational neuroscience research findings and recommendations to design study curriculum and to aid in helping students manage learning challenges such as dyslexia, dyscalculia, and ADHD.

Affect Academics follows advances in educational neuroscience very closely. We emphasize to our students and their families that brains are “elastic” and that they have the power to make themselves smarter. In fact, every time a student makes a mistake, he or she actually gets smarter as new neural connections form.

Affect Academics chooses to help students apply what makes them strong learners—the skills, thinking, and study habits that have worked for them in the past—rather than focusing on what’s wrong. Our experience is that students quite often come to us not because they have a particular learning challenge, but because they are struggling with an inflexible curriculum at school.

Once we understand a child’s strengths, we can give him or her targeted coping skills to bolster strengths, overcome weaknesses, and provide the ongoing academic support the student needs to experience lasting change in his or her cognitive capabilities.

We also use growth mindset language that empowers students to understand their own strengths and instills the confidence that through appropriate support and hard work they can capitalize on those strengths and overcome any learning challenges.

At Affect Academics, we do not define children with labels. We do not use the language of learning disability, but rather neurodiversity and strength. This is not a platitude—this is neurological fact.

Many students, both standard and nonstandard learners, suffer from some degree of anxiety. The causes are wide-ranging, from low self-esteem due to a learning challenge such as ADHD, to learned perceptions that “girls are bad at math” or “boys aren’t good readers.”

Research shows that anxious thoughts occupy the same area of working memory that we use to hold numbers in our heads to manipulate them, so a child who is thinking an anxious thought literally cannot perform the required computation. In addition, studies reveal that more than 90% of elementary school teachers model math anxious behavior themselves, which is then imitated by children, and further compounds the problem!

Alleviating student anxiety frees up cognitive resources that can be applied to learning. For example, research shows that remediating math anxiety can lead to a 20-percentile point gain in standardized test scores, even in the absence of any content remediation.

Affect Academics recognizes the central role of emotion in learning. Simply put, happier, empowered students learn more effectively and efficiently and have better long-term outcomes.

Studies show that emotion plays a critical role in helping students apply the knowledge they learn in school to real-world decision making throughout their lives. As such, educators have a moral imperative to create a positive learning environment so students can achieve a higher quality of life as adults, not just perform well on end-of-year standardized tests.

Researchers also have found that emotions result in profound changes to the body, including the brain. It’s a small wonder, then, that anxious people exhibit difficulty learning, and rather than learning the lesson on the blackboard, they learn to avoid a subject altogether!

What’s needed are learning environments where student concentration is so complete that there is no space left for worries or irrelevant thoughts. Such environments would create a positive emotional climate where learning is its own reward.

Many of the children that land at Affect Academics do so because their current school is failing them. They are the proverbial square pegs being forced into round holes.

We know that every child can be a successful student, and we understand that traditional tutoring is not always enough. Affect Academics approaches each case holistically, using the latest research in neuroscience, education, and learning to create a manageable plan to get your child back on track.

Our personalized math and reading interventions include tutoring for content, and then go further to include training in learning strategies for both students and parents, collaboration with teachers and other professionals, and anxiety management techniques.

For example, one of our 10th-grade students, who really had no issues in math learning other than anxiety, went from all Cs to a B+ after four sessions. Another student went from the 33rd percentile to the 82nd percentile on the SSAT.

While we are sensitive to the unique financial concerns of parents of children struggling in school, it’s impossible for Affect Academics to provide a definitive “Yes” or “No” regarding whether our educational therapy services are tax deductible. In some cases, they may be, so we always recommend that parents check with their tax preparers regarding their specific situations. In general, many tax deductions and/or credits are available for expenses related to a child’s medical expenses and therapy, including  ADHD and other learning disabilities.

Please contact Emily at info@affectacademics.com. If she can’t answer your question, she will either cc Cristina on the email back or schedule you an initial consult to talk with her in person.