PACE training

and it was of enormous benefit. She is dyslexic (had just finished 8 months of vision therapy before we started PACE), and the program helped her develop sequential processing skills as well as visual processing skills. Her reading advanced from bizarre 2nd grade level to fluent 4th grade level during the program. My husband and I were so impressed, I went to Colorado Springs and took the training. (Maybe someday I’ll have the time to use it!)

Another mother I know did the training and was very successful with her 6th grade son, who is also dyslexic. She now takes a few private PACE clients.

A neighbor sent her 8yo CAPD son through PACE, using the same provider we had used. It helped him in a number of ways, but he did not get the big reading gains. I subsequently tutored him using Phono-Graphix (I’m certified in that too) and that was the piece he needed to get up to grade level in reading.

Not all children get dramatic gains. In general, PACE seems to work best for those children who do not have major neurological problems.

There is a PACE-Providers list at http://www.groups.yahoo.com that you may want to join. It hasn’t been very active, but once in awhile someone will post a question and there will be some good responses. You can check the archived messages too for information.

In my opinion, it would be difficult to make a living solely as a PACE provider. However, I think that PACE is an extremely worthwhile program to have in one’s bag of tricks if the primary interest is in providing children with what they need to be successful.

Mary

Hi Carol,

I was at the same training session as MaryMN. My primary goal for training was to teach my then 13yo, 8th grade dd to read at grade level (she was reading at a 3rd grade level). It took us a little longer than protocol to get through both PACE & MTC but upon completion, her total reading cluster on the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests-R, Form H, was a grade equivalent score of 11.0! WOW!!!

I have not used my PACE/MTC training with any other students but plan to do so soon. Like Mary, I think that PACE/MTC are extremelly valuable programs to be used in helping students improve their cognitive skills while learning to read.

Blessings, momo

I went to the PACE training last year. We did PACE starting in June. We did parts of the program for 4 months.

My son has CAPD, visual processing, and sensory integration issues. We had done 8 months of vision therapy, and six months of other therapy to deal with his various integration issues. It was the opinion of the therapist we dealt with that he was at the point to benefit from PACE. He now was rhythmatic while earlier he couldn’t keep a beat if his life depended on it.

I share this to give you context for our experience. We got some gains from the program but in my honest opinion not enough for the effort expended. Many times I felt like we were beating our head against the wall and my son went weeks without passing a single “level”. It did highlight areas of difficulty that I wasn’t even aware of and we have since then been trying to systematically address these issues. We since have done The Listening Program (sound therapy) and have had an easier time with the auditory processing component of the program. I personally would advise anyone whose child has documented auditory processing problems to do some sort of sound therapy first.

The problem with any sort of program is that it seems to be a bit hit and miss for individual kids. It depends what the problem is and where the deficit is located.
And even with good help, it isn’t always easy to figure out what to do, and for how long. I see this with other programs too—some kids have remarkable changes with Audioblox while others seem to be minimally impacted, some kids lives are transformed with Fast Forwad while others have solid gains (but not like a new kid) or even no gains. It is also hard to know when persistance is the key or not. We did Fast Forward and had almost no gains for 7 weeks on one very critical exercise. Then my son just went gung ho. This kept me going with PACE but the outcome was very different. I don’t know how you can predict these things.

Beth

Thank you to Mary, momoMO, and Beth,
Thank you for taking the time to write such informative responses to my question about PACE. I have taught in the public education system for 20 years and did not know that such programmes were available to me. Granted, classroom teachers do not have the time to provide the individual help that some students need - but many do not know what to suggest outside the school system. I feel as if I have just discovered the entrance to a gold mine of information at web sites such as ldonline. Public educators need to know more about resources outside schools, and not be afraid to recommend them. Mary, momoMO, and Beth, I appreciate your help with my education.
Carol

all the students.