Colleen Hroncich
Colleen Hroncich
Honey Sayler has a passion for helping children learn to read. In addition to her elementary and special education degrees, she’s trained in the Orton-Gillingham method for literacy. So she was frustrated in public schools when students would have to drop into single-digit proficiency levels before being referred for special education. “We had to wait until kids got so far behind before offering intervention, and that just didn’t sit well with me,” she says. “I’m an avid reader. I love literacy. I feel like it unlocks every child’s world.” That passion was the primary motivator behind her decision to open Hope Education Consulting in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
After a 15-year career in public schools, Honey says she was burned out. She had spent time as a resource teacher in elementary and middle school and then worked in case management for a virtual school, which involved assessing students with learning disabilities, writing Individualized Education Programs, and helping the parent coaches with their learning at home. She’d also tutored kids around her kitchen table when her older kids were young.
“I knew I loved kids, and I knew I loved teaching. But my caseload kept growing year after year, and I kept having more cases of violent students with a lack of administrative support,” she recalls. She left teaching in 2019 and was planning to go back to school to pursue a different career. Then the pandemic hit, which gave her the push to pursue a long-time dream.
“I’d always wanted to open a learning center, but I was always just a little bit fearful of taking that risk,” Honey explains. “Slowly over the course of 2020, I started doing virtual lessons. I turned one of our empty spare bedrooms into a mini classroom and started working with folks at home.” After around a year of that, » Read More
https://www.cato.org/blog/friday-feature-hope-education-consulting