Thrive | Unlocking the Code
Fuse loves to tell the stories of dreamers, those people who risk, innovate, and collaborate in service of need.
Like Cheryl Eller.
Four years ago, across the grain of security and comfort, she left her job as teacher and assistant principal at Key School to start Thrive, an education center focused on children with learning challenges, specifically Dyslexia, ADHD, and Dyscalculia.
It was a crazy thing to do, she says. At the age of 56, recently divorced, forced to pull herself up by the bootstraps, she could have coasted into retirement, collecting benefits, risking little.
A dream, though, kept whispering in her ear.
She already swallowed the Kool Aid working at the Key School, seeing dyslexic students and their families move from chaos to hope. For Cheryl, nothing could match the joy of playing a part in that.
Yet, because the cost of such specialized care is often prohibitive, few parents could afford the help they desperately needed. Her dream was to offer affordable care.
Inspired by her father, who worked in a factory but found life in serving others, Cheryl chose love over fear. Understanding that one in five children suffers from dyslexia, the dream morphed into a calling to help however she could.
She told herself she only needed an apartment, just enough money to make a living, and a ton of perseverance.
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Fuse asked Cheryl the same question we ask each of our clients:
If you could tell me just one story of what gets you up in the morning, which one would you pick?
Cheryl’s reply was immediate: Laina.
As Cheryl began to tell the story, she cited several reasons for choosing Laina.
First, it reveals the chaos dyslexia creates, plunging a family into the depths of their collective wit’s end.
At about the same time Cheryl contemplated leaving her job to start Thrive, Laina was diagnosed with dyslexia, ADHD, and auditory processing disorder. She was abandoned and failing in second grade.
When you can’t read, how do you learn?
Laina’s story speaks to identity — making trouble is better than seeming stupid. Like many living with dyslexia, Laina acted out. In an outtake of a video Fuse created for Thrive, Laina and her mom, Denise, shared a humorous incident that wasn’t so funny at the time.
Cheryl described Laina as the child you see in the supermarket and choose another aisle. She once threw a rock that dented a teacher’s car. Cheryl says 90 percent of children in juvenile rehabilitation centers suffer from learning disorders, the majority dyslexia.
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Another reason Cheryl tells Laina’s story is because they share a history.
Before she started Thrive, Denise hired Cheryl as a private tutor to help Laina.
Things were not going well for this 8-year-old girl. Her school threatened to kick her out; she wasn’t learning anything — didn’t try. She was about to be labeled with behavioral disorders.
Forced to quit her job, Denise desperately sought help for her lost girl. Overwhelmed with hours of wrestling over homework, trips to tutors, doctors, agencies, therapists and psychiatrists, Denise shifted her entire focus to save her child.
During her last tutoring session, Cheryl remembers Laina crawling under the desk, screaming at the top of her lungs, NO I CAN’T, every time Cheryl said, YES YOU CAN. When Laina changed CAN’T to WON’T, Cheryl apologized to her mom. Tutoring would be a waste of Denise’s money. You can’t help a child who believes she is beyond it. She encouraged Denise to focus on the emotional issues first.
After eight months of concentrating on behavioral therapy, neurofeedback, and psychiatric help to find the right balance of medication, Laina was finally able to control her impulsivity, with some success.
Until Christmas day.
When Laina threw and shattered a glass ornament, her older sister told her parents that the family needed help. She couldn’t stand what Laina was doing to them, monopolizing everyone’s time and energy.
On January 1, Denise begged Cheryl to start Thrive.
With tears, she told Cheryl she could see no other way out for their family.
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On a steady diet of Ramen noodles, Cheryl started Thrive in 2006 with two students, Samuel, who was also autistic, and Laina.
The main reason Cheryl chooses to tell Laina’s story is because of her transformation, a reversal of destiny. A Fellow of the Academy of Orton-Gillingham Practitioners and Educators, Cheryl used multisensory instruction and repetition to help overcome a biological reality. In the brain of someone with dyslexia, the neural pathway for processing information, specifically text, is different than others. Cheryl often speaks of “breaking the code” leading to understanding.
Once Laina understood she wasn’t broken, that there wasn’t something wrong with her, she glimpsed success. Oh, I CAN do that. Oh, I GET that. Cheryl saw layers of frustration and anger peel away with each new aha moment. Four years into her time at Thrive, Laina now tests a grade level above in each of her subjects, two levels above in English.
Laina also plays the tennis circuit in the Carolinas, and her volleyball team recently won the national championship. Like so many other people with dyslexia — artists, entrepreneurs, athletes, visionaries, Laina is especially gifted. She is working toward a career in cybersecurity.
Laina’s story dramatically represents the unique potential of each child with dyslexia. Cheryl encourages each of her students to look at school as temporary and, to some extent, always a struggle. After school, you get to be who you were born to be — someone who thinks differently, a person who has learned to employ the upside of dyslexia, a creativity that imagines new possibilities.
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Four years after starting the school, Thrive has 35 students and 6 teachers. Along with the unexpected growth, Cheryl’s dream has expanded — to provide tutoring for every child with dyslexia, regardless of their ability to pay.
The story of Laina, and so many others, Cheryl believes to be priceless.
