Best Professionals for Helping Students | Good Sensory Learning

Finding the best professional to help with a struggling student can be a challenging chore. 

Several Professionals Can Help:

• Educational Therapist: An educational therapist offers remedial treatment for struggling students and those with any type of disability that impacts learning. In addition, many offer help to students with social and emotional challenges involving their learning difficulties. Support is often individualized for each learner.  Most educational therapists have degrees in both psychology and education. 
• Learning Specialist: A learning specialist is a private coach who offers compensatory learning strategies and metacognitive approaches to learning for all students, from those with disabilities to those who are gifted. Some also offer a multisensory remedial approach to reading, writing, math, and other subject areas, as well as assistive technology advice and training.  A learning specialist should have advanced training in education and psychology.
• Executive Functioning Coach: An executive functioning coach offers assistance with planning, organization, prioritizing, self-monitoring, self-initiation, and time management.  Individualized coaching sessions teach students to maintain structured and consistent approaches.  Many students with ADHD and executive functioning weaknesses or executive functioning disorder can benefit from working with this type of professional. 
• Tutor: A tutor offers instruction in specific academic subjects. They teach classroom concepts, and they may or may not have training and experience in education. Most offer homework help.

What are the Steps to Finding the Best Professional?

1. The first thing you need to do is understand the core difficulties.  You can begin with simple hearing and vision screenings at your local pediatrician's office to rule out any possible auditory or visual weaknesses.
2. Next, you can ask your local school system or a professional in your community to provide a comprehensive psycho-educational evaluation.  This can help to uncover any cognitive-based deficits that may be getting in the way of the learning process.
3. Finally, one of the professionals discussed above can provide one-to-one support so that any core difficulties can be addressed, compensatory learning strategies can be established, and optimal study skills can be implemented.

Can Parents or a Tutor Do the Work of a Professional?

Absolutely!  I created Good Sensory Learning, an online store of remedial products, multisensory lessons, and assessments for professionals, teachers, and parents.  In fact, you can always use the various menu options at Good Sensory Learning to find the needed resources.  If you prefer, you can review our online catalog.  Finally, you can send me an email describing a student's needs, and I'm happy to send you product recommendations.  You can reach out to me at erica@goodsensorylearning.com

As you can see, there are several different professionals that you can hire to help your children.  In addition, there are tools and resources for parents to assist their kids themselves.