Thank You Oakwood

Today, I’m crying happy tears.

Today was the day my daughter got into the high school of her choice.  Both of the high schools she wanted, actually;). A choice made possible by the last 5 years spent at Oakwood. How grateful we are for the unique & gifted teachers & the approach to learning only Oakwood knows how to make happen - it's “the Oakwood Way!”

It’s hard to put into words what a difference this school has made in her education journey - and in the lives of all of us who love her.

First and second grade were hard years. Those were the years of frustrated tears, of not knowing what to do frustrations. As her friends learned to read and fell in love with chapter books, it felt like my daughter was going backward. Instead of loving school, my talkative, sweet, funny, caring, and outgoing child became quiet and withdrawn. She didn’t want to go to school anymore. 

Homework routinely turned into tears at the kitchen table, and nightly reading took an hour instead of the fifteen minutes it was supposed to take. It was a chore instead of a joy.  Every word, every line, every page was like it was being read and figured out for the very first time. I knew it wasn’t supposed to be this hard. But I didn’t know why - or what to do about it.  

Thanks to the good advice of others, we paid for testing as fast as we could get it. The diagnosis was the easy part - dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia.

But we still struggled - trying to fit a square peg in a round hole - we loved our current school so much (our other daughters were thriving there) and wanted to make it work. We tried after-school tutors and summer tutors. We added a Mathnasium membership and got accommodations for testing and academic requirements. None of it was enough. By third grade, our daughter was still not reading, and the challenges were growing, not shrinking.

Thankfully, along the way, others shared their similar experiences, and I learned of an amazing place named Oakwood School.  I didn’t know how a school could teach so differently that it could make a difference, but I was ready to try anything. That first night, I sat in the admissions seminar, and I cried new tears - happy tears. The stories I heard, the people I met, these were “our people”, “our tribe!” - they understood what my daughter was going through and they knew how to help. They saw the light on the other side of the tunnel.  

We made the hard decision to pull out of the school we otherwise loved, to give Oakwood a try for our oldest daughter. 

Now, in hindsight, my only regret is that we didn’t find Oakwood sooner. By Christmas break of our first year at Oakwood, my child not only could read, but she felt like herself again (her fun personality & excitement for school had returned!). She would fall in love with chapter books that spring and she would never turn back. Now, she loves math and wants to be an author when she grows up. What a change.  

Over the years, I’ve watched her own unique learning differences - dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia. She knows how to talk about how she learns best and she knows what to ask for from teachers to help her master learning new things.  

She expects the best from herself - (she strives for As - and she knows she is capable of achieving them!) This is the daughter I knew and missed. This is the daughter Oakwood knew how to teach and bring back to me. 

Thank you Oakwood - I am forever grateful.