Our 10-year old daughter was diagnosed with dyslexia in December 2018. After doing thorough research for various tutors and programs throughout Vancouver, we engaged Sam Mills of Touchstone in March 2019 – on the recommendation of a friend – to help our daughter work through her learning challenges. We could not be more impressed with the results. 

 

Sam is an incredible intuitive teacher with more than 20 years of teaching experience to inform her decisions. She meets our daughter where she is at and does not try to “shoehorn” her into a methodology. In the short span of four months – though patient reading, games and play – Sam has helped remove our daughter's anxiety around literacy. She looks forward to Sam’s visits and has started to embrace reading and learning instead of feeling shame. Recently, without support or help, she took it upon herself to create a book-like father’s day card. Without Sam’s patience, we are certain this progress would not be possible in such a short period of time.

 

If your child is faced with learning challenges, I highly recommend Sam.

- Parent of Client, 2019- 2020

​

Sam is very gifted at what she does. She has a knack for connecting with people, especially children, which I think helps them to feel safer and gives them the confidence they need to challenge themselves.

 

I am truly grateful to Sam for all her support. My 14-year-old daughter really struggles with deciphering text. It is hard work for her to read through a sentence and fathom it's meaning. It's about the same effort as it would take me to read a sentence reflected back at me in a mirror. It's possible, but not easy.

 

Sam has helped my daughter take her successes and build off of them. She's incredibly flexible and able to shift her lesson plans around the projects my daughter is most passionate about at any given moment. She helps to lighten my child's burdens and encourages my daughter to set goals and achieve them. 

 

We've tried many different programs over the past 4 years. Sam's approach has been as or more effective than the most expensive and intensive programs we've tried (Reading Foundation and the Summer Clocks Program with Eaton Arrowsmith). Sam is also my daughter's favourite person to work with. My daughter said Sam is, "four thousand times better" than the teachers and tutors from those other programs.

 

My daughter has also had the good fortune to work with Paul. Our experiences with Paul have been less frequent because they were through our public school, but his approach also worked really well for my daughter.

 

If your child requires support for learning challenges, I highly recommend hiring Sam or Paul. I honestly can't say enough good things about them.

 Parent of Client, 2018 - 2020

​

​

 

We feel so grateful to be working with Paul. He brings a calm energy into our home and shows up with lots of choices for activities. He takes the time to find out what my kids want to work on and incorporates that into his plan. He also keeps things fun with games and stories so my kids really enjoy the lessons and look forward to his visits. They don’t even realize how much they are learning because they’re having fun.

 

 Parent of Client, 2018 - 2020            

​

​

"Sam really knows how to connect with and create a safe space to encourage learning. My daughter started working with Sam a few months back and she has been opened up to the brilliance that was hidden inside herself... that we were unable to access on our own. My daughter was under the impression that she couldn't write about a certain topic and Sam was able to show her how -- in a very short period of time. I highly recommend Sam."  

-Parent of client, 2017