Before and After Lindamood-Bell

Jody Brown, the Director of Instruction at Lindamood-Bell, penned a heartfelt note of gratitude to Nanci Bell, detailing the remarkable strides her son Drew has made with Lindamood-Bell Instruction. Watch the video for his amazing transformation!

Dear Nanci,

Last night, I spent a little time crafting a LinkedIn post for hiring purposes and thought…why not share a testimonial about our journey with Drew?! I pieced together a video showcasing Drew’s progress in reading— the stark difference from October to now leaves me in awe.

In the Fall, he would melt down when reading. He would yell at me when I tried to help him. He just wanted me to snuggle and play….to be his mama. I would lay in bed in the middle of the night with worry. Is his reading going to improve? Are they teaching him how to attack a word? I knew they weren’t stimulating his imagery. I would say to Brandon weekly, “I KNOW WHAT WILL HELP! I think it’s time.”

Each week in early Fall, we would look at our busy work schedules and his sports schedule trying to figure out how to make it work. We would see a little progress here or there, but I knew he needed Seeing Stars. I knew just a little bit of it would do the trick.

Once I figured out all of the logistics with the schedule and our lives and rearranged our winter break plans, we signed him up to start the week of Thanksgiving. I was living through all the roadblocks and challenges that I had helped parents navigate for decades. Then Brandon and I got COVID (for the first time!) the week he started. Are you kidding me?! We pivoted from going to San Luis Obispo Learning Center to kick start his first week with intensive in-center instruction, and he did Online Instruction, 4 hours/day. And somehow didn’t get COVID! My VERY active weasel did it because the learning center team of rockstars set him up for success. He didn’t complain. At times, he creatively tried to get out of doing as many words as I would have liked at the time, but Damian and Sarah worked so hard to motivate and connect with him.

He now reads chapter books quickly and accurately and wants to write pages of stories. He was pulled out of resource groups at his school in February, a few weeks after he finished Seeing Stars. During his parent-teacher conference, his reading scores soared at the exact time he did sensory-cognitive instruction. Coincidence? I know it is not. We did this. Your program did this.

I’ll be forever grateful to you for the gift you gave us and for the impact that Seeing Stars had and continues to have on my soon-to-be eight-year-old. Our bedtime routine is now full of stories that he reads to me while we calmly snuggle and laugh about the stories or talk about characters and make plot predictions. No more strife. What a gift!

With love and gratitude,

Jody and Brandon