We have recently started publishing a newsletter for educators in our area and in this issue, we shared one of our success stories with a Chinese girl who is from an ESL-speaking background.  This girl is quite severely learning disabled and yet within a year, she has made some tremendous progress. Most encouraging of all is the fact that her attitude towards learning has improved as did her social-emotional well being!

The message we want to get across is simply this: LD children do not necessarily have to be in a special school where all the students have LD. With proper support, they can do very well in a regular school setting. The school-based team, working together with an intermediary special education service such as us, can produce some very encouraging results.

Summer is a good time to jump-start LD intervention. Teachers should encourage parents to take advantage of this time to help their children move ahead!

We are having Tea & Talk @ Hycroft for Chinese-speaking parents on May 26^th, 2010. Chinese-speaking parents who find it hard to access special education services due to language barriers should make it a priority to attend this event!

Email us @: events@Learn2ManageLD.com to RSVP.

Over the years, I have come across many cases where Chinese-speaking parents do not know how to access special educations for their learning disabled children. As a result, precious time for learning is lost and the children often suffer from all kinds of emotional issues, and amongst them is low self-esteem. This really saddens me. In fact, this bothers me so much that I will do something about it!

Dr. Winnifred Tang & Associates Learning Management Inc. is organizing a talk for Chinese-speaking parents which will take place on Wednesday, May 26^th, 2010, from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at Hycroft, home of The University Womens’ Club of Vancouver. There will be a tea reception afterwards so parents will have a chance to chat with all of us from the office of Dr. Winnifred Tang.

Tea & Talk @ Hycroft for Chinese-Speaking parents is intended to be a cozy and leisurely event. We want parents to feel comfortable talking to us about their children’s learning problems. The beautiful setting at Hycroft, hopefully, will help us to achieve this purpose!

Interested parents should contact us as soon as possible to avoid disappointment. All the information is on the flyer.

We have opened an account at HSBC specifically for Tea & Talk @ Hycroft. Parents can go to HSBC directly and make a payment for their tickets. Before they do so, they should email us at events@Learn2ManageLD.com to ensure that the seats are still available. We will send out the HSBC account information upon confirming seat availability.

The registration procedures were designed to reduce unnecessary paper work and communication. We hope you will find this method of registering simple and convenient.

See you at Tea & Talk @ Hycroft on May 26^th at 7:00 p.m.!

Our clients are often pleasantly surprised by how quickly their children begin to experience the sweet taste of success once we begin working with them. Our secret? We take an “uncluttered” approach to our work and we keep things simple and direct. And that can only be done if one truly knows what he or she is doing!

I like to tell clients that we prefer not to have them spend unnecessary time and money if we can help it. For example, most psycho-educational assessments take six to eight hours and that is very stressful for the children, especially for the younger ones. With us, we can have a high quality psycho-educational assessment done by an experienced and respected psychologist for much less time and cost. And here, I am talking about an assessment that can stand up to the scrutiny of scientists working in the forefront of research in our field.

How do we do that? Well, we make it a priority to establish a professional network of excellence. We have a good working relationship with professionals in related fields who share our philosophy of simplicity and directness. These professionals will not sell unnecessary services. They are happy to help you when you need them, but only if you really need them. Why? Because they have better things to do with their lives than trying to waste your time and theirs!

Working with quality individuals is our secret to success.

Before the Christmas holidays, our organization ⎯ Dr. Winnifred Tang & Associates Learning Management Inc. ⎯ was invited to be included in the Community Healthcare and Resource Directory (CHARD) in 2010.

The creation of CHARD is indeed a step forward by the British Columbia Medical Association, the Ministry of Health Services and HealthLink BC. For the longest time, one of the major challenges facing GPs and other health providers in the province has been a lack of information when it comes to referring patients to the right professionals to get timely and appropriate intervention for children with learning disabilities. Learning disabilities are learning problems related to academic learning; the most common ones are reading disability (dyslexia) and arithmetic disability (dyscalculia).

Many times, I have sighed and shaken my head at the fragmented service delivery for those with learning disabilities. For example, we have clients coming into our office with assessments from medical professionals such as pediatricians or psychiatrists; when we look at the date of these reports, we cannot help wondering why there is such a big time lapse from the time the client was suspected to have learning issues to the time they finally found their way to our office on their own. There is no intermediary service linking the diagnosis to appropriate special educational services. Medical professionals and special education professionals must work more closely to bridge the gaps in service delivery so client’s interests are best served.

Hopefully, with CHARD, gone are the days of parents having to rely on the “grapevine” for information when it comes to finding appropriate special education services for their children with learning disabilities! Sometimes it just takes too long for clients to find their way to our office and precious time is lost.

And so I say, “Bravo to BCMA, Ministry of Health Services and HealthLink BC!!!” It is high time medical professionals and special education professionals join together to serve patients more effectively. There has to be a way for parents to access evidence-based interventions for their children that are founded on sound scientific research.

Let’s drink to the CHARD initiative which is enabling the formation of this very desirable and productive union between the medical profession and the special education profession!

Happy New Year!!!

Winnifred talked about her meeting with Linda Reid, our Minister of State for Childcare.

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Getting a timely diagnosis for injuries and other medical problems is crucial for a successful treatment outcome. Everybody knows that. The question is: how to we know which expert(s) to consult for our particular problem? (more…)

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Betty Kosel, VSB ESL Consultant and Dr. Winnifred Tang at the Kirin for a “working lunch” in the fall of 2007

Last year, I accepted an invitation from Betty Kosel, ESL Consultant at the Vancouver School Board, to give the keynote address for the ESL teacher’s section on their Teacher’s Professional Development Day. The planning was done in October of 2007 and the talk was in February 2008. You can see us, Betty and I, in the photograph at the right, enjoying a “dim sum” lunch at Kirin Restaurant while discussing details of the presentation.

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