Our Team
We’re passionate educators
Learning ABILITIES' goal is to enable students of all ages to experience success by helping struggling readers to accelerate their reading achievement.
Our philosophy is to match learning styles to learning needs by specifically teaching reading, writing, and spelling using multisensory structured language techniques.
Pam Dudley
Pam Dudley is Certified Dyslexia Practitioner with over thirty years of experience and has taught Structured Literacy with students in the classroom and in private practice. She has more than 5,000 hours of experience working with students during her 30+ years and has trained approximately 150 people to become practitioners. Pam has extensive training and continues to further her knowledge by attending Orton-Gillingham Structured Literacy courses, gaining from presentations by recognized experts, following current literature and as a member of the International Dyslexia Association.
Early in her career she received Orton-Gillingham based training from the Reading Center in Rochester, Minnesota. Jean Osman and Paula Rome were known for developing the Language Tool Kits and have taught 7,600 students and 1,400 teachers throughout their careers. Many of their students went on to begin centers and programs across the United States. Pam is one of those, founding two centers including her current center, Learning ABILITIES.
Pam later expanded her training to include Project Read, Phonics Fundamentals, Read Naturally and Handwriting Without Tears. She has attended workshops with many leaders in the field that includes Will Anderson, Arlene Sonday, Louisa Moats, Marcia Henry, Suzanne Carreker, and Maryanne Wolf, to name a few.
Phonics Fundamentals is a Orton-Gillingham based program developed by the SLD Read in Kalamazoo, Michigan where Pam tutored many hours and went on to assist in tutor training. Pam brought the Phonics Fundamentals program to the Kansas City area in 2000 where she started her tutoring business. She is dedicated to empowering parents, teachers, and tutors with Orton-Gillingham methods.
Jan Petersen
Jan Petersen joined forces with Pam in 2006 and has played a key part in the development of Learning ABILITIES. She has taught in the private and public sector including Frontier Academy Charter School in Colorado and homeschooling her own children. As an instructor of Phonics Fundamentals, she combines her 20 years of experience with her specialized training in Orton-Gillingham to teach a variety of students including adapting programing for older students including adults. She is very passionate and dedicated to her students and provides excellent teaching to all students, especially those that have dyslexia.
Jan also is a member of the International Dyslexia Society and has had additional training with Read Naturally and Handwriting Without Tears. Her expertise in art, journalism, and graphic design is represented in our brochures and other publications.
Jennifer Wright
I have been in education for over 20 years with roles such as a classroom teacher, a tutor, an interventionist, and a coach. I have worked with children from 3 years to 16 years of age in the area of literacy. I am passionate about systematic, explicit, sequential instruction utilizing a multisensory approach to learning. I have seen significant progress with many students over the years with this approach. I believe in the importance of developing phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and writing- with the ultimate goal of comprehension, self-confidence, and the joy of reading.
I am beginning my 23rd year of teaching (whew!!). For the first 14 years of my career, I have taught 2nd, 3rd, 4th, early childhood SPED, and worked as a respite therapist for kids with autism. These past 8 years I have worked as a Reading Interventionist/Literacy Coach for the Platte County School District and currently service Kindergarten - 5th grades. I have been fortunate to present to our district-wide Reading teachers and Special Education teachers on Structured Literacy as a year-long professional development and initiative in our district. I had the opportunity to present at the state level in the summer of 2022 with a team of outstanding teachers at the Department of Elementary & Secondary Education Literacy Summit in Columbia, MO.
In addition to my full-time job, I also tutor students after school and during the summers. I completed an educator-training program titled LETRS Professional Learning Course: Volumes 1 and 2 in May 2023, and I have received over 500 hours of training in the Orton-Gillingham approach within the program Learning Abilities. I now co-teach this course through Baker University in the summertime. I embed my trainings and the O-G approach into my daily Reading Intervention groups and in my tutoring sessions because I believe in it and have seen firsthand how successful it can be!
Mary Kennedy
Mary Kennedy began her career in education as an elementary classroom teacher and earned her Master of Arts in Child and Adolescent Literacy from Loyola Marymount University. After many years as a classroom teacher, she worked as a reading specialist at the Kelter Center in Los Angeles, California.
When Mary moved to Kansas City, she began working at the Educational Therapy Center, and trained in the "Phonics Fundamentals" program. She later worked for Learning ABILITIES to help create a teacher training website and share her experience using "Phonics Fundamentals" in schools.
Mary helped implement "Phonics Fundamentals" in several schools in Missouri and Kansas, where she worked as a reading specialist and literacy coach. In implementing the "Phonics Fundamentals" program incorporating the Orton-Gillingham approach, she witnessed first-hand how it provided optimum small-group instruction and support for students learning to read. Mary observed how the essential elements of Structured Literacy embedded in Phonics Fundamentals provided explicit, sequential, and multisensory components for students. She is an advocate of the program, citing the engagement and success of students.
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tutoring or professional training?
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