HOW LOOMIS GATEWAY ACADEMY BEGAN: LGA STARTED OUT LIFE AS A DIFFERENT ORGANIZATION IN A DIFFERENT CITY WITH A DIFFERENT NAME!
In 2012, Tesa Briles and Stuart Demmy, with a combined background of 20 years in the Waldorf School system, embarked upon a new journey – a journey that would end with them becoming founders and owners of a new private school.
When full-time teaching in Waldorf schools was no longer viable for either of them, Stuart and Tesa began to utilize an Orton Gillingham method to teach individual students how to read. Many of these students they had known from their Waldorf background, but they also encountered students from other educational backgrounds. They were very pleased to see that students who had struggled to read before, were now saying things like, “How come I can do this now?!”
Witnessing the students’ joy and self-confidence was very rewarding, and parents, needless to say, were also overjoyed to finally see their children succeed. The students Stuart and Tesa worked with ranged in grades from 1st to 8th – all unable to read even after numerous years of exposure to a wide variety of reading programs in public and private schools alike. After months of each of them working separately with different students, yet utilizing the Orton Gillingham (or Structured Literacy) reading programs that were so successful, they realized, “So there really is an effective method and curriculum that works for teaching students how to read, even those who have been working very hard with no success!”
They imagined a Summer school that would bring together a small group of the children whom they’d worked with during the prior school year. They wanted to incorporate Math, Art, and outdoor activities into a short day of learning and fun for a five-week summer session. Tesa researched schools on the East Coast designed for dyslexic learners and came up with a “summer school” plan. She calculated that 8 students would make having such a program feasible; even better, 12 students enrolled! Each of the students was reluctant to come through the door on that first day of summer school, but 5 weeks later, none wanted the program to end. The faculty were amazed at how each of them in their own way had apparently regained a sense of themselves that had been lost in their struggles to read, write, spell and do math in their prior school years. Hence the name became “Read, Write and Spell.”
Stuart and Tesa, along with other teachers and the parents, were completely surprised by what they had witnessed. Not surprisingly, some parents asked, “ Could you PLEASE continue this ‘teaching approach’ into the next school year? We have never known our children to be excited about school!”
Those five weeks had been the only positive school learning experience their children had ever had, and they wanted more.
Dyslexia
Being the curious and on-going learners that Stuart and Tesa were, besides being educators, they began an in-depth study of reading difficulty and discovered that there is truly only ONE reading disability, and that disability is called “Dyslexia.” (Nancy Mather Ph.D., Essentials of the Dyslexia Assessment; ISBN-13: 978-0470927601) Prefix ‘dis’ means difficulty with, and base ‘lexia’ means reading. Reading Comprehension is not a reading disability; it is a comprehension difficulty. Dyslexia is an inherited learning disability. The incidence of dyslexia, 12%-20% of the population world-wide, has remained the same over the decades. It is not a growing problem; it is a misunderstood and underdiagnosed problem.
After much discussion, Stuart and Tesa decided to offer a program in the coming school year similar to the summer program they had just completed. They weren’t sure what to expect.
“Read, Write and Spell,” founded in 2012 was changed to “Loomis Gateway Academy” in 2015. In the years since 2015, LGA continued to grow. It started with three programs, as it does to this day: registered with CDE Private full-time school; After-school Tutoring, and Summer School.
Enrollment grew from 2 to 50+ students in the full-time school, and approximately the same for after-school and Summer School programs. Every year, between 100 and 150 dyslexic students in Placer, Sacramento, Nevada and El Dorado counties now have their learning difficulties addressed and remediated in a way that was never possible before. LGA’s Curriculum has also grown to include Making Math Real, Wilson Reading System, Just Words, Foundation in Sounds, Institute for Excellence in Writing, Physical Sciences, Physical Education and Fine Arts. Dyslexia Assessments are an on-going essential part of the growth of LGA, where qualified dyslexia testers administer standardized tests and provide comprehensive follow-up reports that are shared with parents, teachers, and often lawyers.
We are proud to be the founders of this unique and wonderful school where students feel safe, happy, and confident. LGA retains the original heartfelt wish that started with 12 students one summer 14 + years ago. LGA was the first and the only school of its kind in the Northern California region outside the Bay Area.
We are blessed with Alumni emails, Instagram messages, and text messages expressing students’ gratitude for their time with us. Recently, a parent addressed us as “the life changer”! Many alumni have graduated from college with degrees in Education, Nursing, Aviation, and Engineering. Others are working their way through high school. None have required further reading instruction since completing the reading programs offered at Loomis Gateway Academy - they made it!
