Dana
Educational Therapist
M.F.A., M.A.
As a childhood artist, I had a thriving career as a theater and television director and was awarded the equivalent of the National Endowment for the Arts grant from the government of the Republic of Kazakhstan. I arrived in NYC to intern with MTV Productions when my marriage to an American artist and the birth of our second child altered my career trajectory. Our second son had special needs, and I delved into the most current research in special education, earning my credential and focusing on my Masters in Educational Therapy. My interests in esoteric elements aligned with scientific research-based best practices, giving me a well-rounded understanding of the beauty of children’s neurodivergent differences and how to nurture and celebrate them.
I have established a successful track record of supporting K-5 neurodivergent learners challenged by attention deficits, auditory processing, dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia.
I am a credentialed special education teacher with an autism authorization. I have been trained in the Wilson Reading System, 95 Percent Literacy Intervention, Clothespin Math, and am certified in the Orton-Gillingham Approach, Sonday System, the Writing Revolution (The Hochman Method: Advanced Thinking Through Writing in Grades 3-12), and Anita Archer’s Explicit Instruction. I strongly believe that young scholars need to be engaged through multimodal learning: we need to touch what we learn, we need to play with what we learn, we need to say out loud what we learn -- and -- we need to learn about how we learn.