New Learning Center at TLS
Program to Use Orton-Gillingham Method to Treat Dyslexia
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By John Lynch

Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, Walt Disney and Henry Ford, John F. Kennedy and Winston Churchill.

These are just some of the notable examples of people who have overcome learning differences to realize success.

Brutus Clay of Lexington has a story, too.

The 40-year-old is vice president of acquisitions and development for Langley Properties Company, president of his family’s thoroughbred operation, Runnymede Farm, is the treasurer of the St. Joseph Hospital Foundation, and serves on the boards of Kentucky River Properties and The Lexington School.

He was a finance major at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and earned his MBA at the University of North Carolina.

All of which is impressive considering his academic beginnings. Because of his dyslexia, Clay was unable to recite his ABCs in the first grade.

Despite studying at a number of schools and developmental centers plus countless hours of tutoring after school, Clay was reading at the third-grade level as a seventh-grader.

Three things rescued Clay -- his own hard work, the persistence and faith of his parents Biz and Catesby, and the Orton-Gillingham technique, a multi-sensory approach that helps students with dyslexia.

In 18 months of working with a tutor, Clay could read at grade level.
To honor his parents and expose children like him to the Orton-Gillingham method, Clay and his wife Sarah have partnered with The Lexington School to found The Learning Center at TLS.

TLS, a school of 500 students in preschool through eighth grade, is adding a school-within-a-school, offering a program for students in the community with average to above average cognitive abilities who have been diagnosed with dyslexia (reading), dyscalculia (math), dysgraphia (writing), as well as other language-based learning differences.

The class size (1:4 teacher to student ratio) and instruction will be designed to meet students’ individual needs.

Teachers will be extensively trained in the Orton-Gillingham approach.

The Center will open next school year, culminating a three-year effort by the Clays and many others in the TLS community, especially Head of School Chuck Baldecchi.

“I can’t speak highly enough of Chuck and the school’s Board of Directors,” Clay said. “This is an exciting project that will serve the broader community.”

Clay attended TLS in preschool, and his three children -- Quin, Catesby and Caroline Anne -- are TLS students.

Clay’s hope is that students like him who learn differently realize their full potential.
“I was so fortunate that my parents had the resources and didn’t give up on me,” he said. “I always knew that one day I wanted to help other kids get over the hump with their education.

“Fortunately for me, my wife shares my passion for this cause. Without her, we wouldn’t be talking about The Learning Center.”

The stakes are high for kids with dyslexia. Roughly 15-20% of the population has dyslexia, and the list of famous success stories is long.

But for countless others who fail at school because of dyslexia, the prospects can be dim. Studies show that a disproportionate number of prison inmates have the condition.

“If they get the help they need, these kids have huge unlocked potential,” Clay said, noting that the percentage of entrepreneurs and successful business people with dyslexia is nearly double the general population.

Clearly, there is a need in the community for this program, and The Lexington School believes it has the right person to run the program.

Jane Childers has 24 years experience as a teacher and heads the school’s current resource center. She has begun the rigorous training to teach students and other teachers the Orton-Gillingham approach.

“What’s so interesting about these kiddos,” she says of students with learning differences, “is they are outside-the-box thinkers.

“They are good athletes and wonderful musicians and artists. But their talents can get buried beneath their learning challenges.”

The Orton-Gillingham approach helps uncover talents because of it uses visual, audio, tactile and kinesthetic techniques in a proven method that helps build pathways for learning in the brain.

In two or three years of this instruction, students can return to a traditional classroom with the skills needed to succeed.

TLS is converting two classrooms into a remodeled Learning Center with four learning pods and a common instructional area.

Students will participate in a full-day program and take specials such as music, art and gym with the rest of the student body. Learning Center students can also participate on TLS sports teams.

The Learning Center is modeled after the Hill Center, part of Durham Academy in North Carolina, where Sarah Clay taught for six years.

“The Hill Center has been helping kids with learning differences for 30 years,” she said. “This is what we want The Learning Center to be. We know Orton-Gillingham worked, because it worked with Brutus and it has 30 years of research behind it.”
Baldecchi is especially grateful given the timing of the project. This is TLS’s 50th anniversary.

“It seems fitting to honor this historic milestone,” he said, “by giving another gift of education to the Lexington community.”