Our Roots
Our Roots
Mind Over Learning sprouted from a small home-based tutoring service, passionately named Desire2Read. It grew steadily to a highly respected and well-recognized tutoring center specializing in reading, writing, comprehension and math learning difficulties.
The most powerful influence in Mind Over Learning’s small beginning was a young boy with a devastating language learning disability, compounded by attention and self-regulatory disorders. Astrid was one of those rare parents who did not accept that there was no solution to teaching him to read, although facing her child’s learning disabilities seemed like a mountain too steep to climb, especially without the right survival gear.
Having exhausted the school’s resources, Astrid looked to Hotz Consulting, a team of educational psychologists specializing in disabilities. After extensive testing, they recommended the Orton-Gillingham method, a program developed specifically for students with learning difficulties and differences. She pursued the training herself under Lois Lyndsay, Ph.D. (Director and Fellow Founder of the Canadian Academy of Therapeutic Tutors), until she was a Certified Trainer of Tutors.
Her son began to experience success and develop hope in his learning due to their hard work, the right program, and a newfound desire to read. Others started to seek her out. At her son’s school she was asked to help students in Learning Assistance where she developed a daily reading program for at-risk students. Soon she was teaching for CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder), offering supportive and effective parenting skills for children with ADHD.
These experiences laid the groundwork for the tutoring services she began to provide. Astrid already had a strong medical background which she applied to her understanding of how the mind works. She further attended professional development and training wherever possible, and the passion that inspired her to help her son and other children fueled her continued growth in knowledge, understanding and experience, particularly in autism.
The modest home-based tutoring service has evolved into Mind Over Learning Tutoring Centre, named such because we help students in so many other areas in addition to reading (see our Programs). We also understand that it takes more than just teaching an effective program to remediate our struggling students; we teach them how to learn.
Astrid only surrounds herself with like-minded people and hires staff with the same underlying passion to help students with learning disabilities, who understand there is a need for a different approach, and are eager to learn a different way to help these students with specialized learning needs. It catches on like fire and you can feel it in our center. Parents feel it; students feel it.