Hey what’s up ya’ll I am Sasha Beckette-Abdullah and I am a reading tutor/reading motivator for Pre-Kindergarten through fourth grade. I am also a Certified Dyslexia Practitioner level 1 for k-12 grade. I have been tutoring for over 13 years. I started out tutoring my two nieces then I branched out into helping children get prepared for kindergarten in my home all while homeschooling my own children. During that time of helping children getting prepared for kindergarten I still kept my focus on making sure they were developing a solid foundation in reading. One thing is for certain we know that a child must have their reading solid if they want to master any subject.
Now it’s time for a little shift. After 2 years of preparing children for kindergarten in my home I decided to still help children but, focus on reading because that was where my passion lied. I loved reading to children which was something I did not only for my own children but, when I would volunteer at my children’s schools and when I would substitute teach as well. I also was asked by my daughter’s third grade teacher at the time to help some of her students with their reading. Even though, I didn’t get paid monetarily for my service, I got paid through gaining more experience and I looked at this as an opportunity to really find out what were children struggling with when it came to reading, which was needing to motivate children to want to read.
This is when I really honed in on motivating children when it comes to reading first then, I would be able to find out what are their deficicencies in reading. Since my population of children that I tutor are African-American I knew the biggest issue was they did not have books that represented them. This is one of the key components that I focus on when I am tutoring my students, making sure they have books and passages that talk about Black people. This is one of the highlights that my parents love about my sessions they know I understand the needs of our Black children and, I go out of my way to make sure they are getting what they need so they will become the strong and confident readers we know they can be.
