Today we’d like to introduce you to Jordi Kleiner.
Jordi, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I’ve always been fascinated by the act of learning – What happens neurologically when we learn to read? When we finally understand and apply a new math concept, what was different than the previous attempts? I decided to come to Chicago to pursue my own education and further others’. After a Masters and Doctoral Degree at Northwestern University in the field of Learning Disabilities, I chose to take the understanding that our field had cultivated through peer reviewed research and share the cutting edge best practices with children, adolescents, and adults that could use it most: those with dyslexia, other learning disabilities, and wider neurodevelopmental needs.
After working one on one with clients for years with amazing satisfaction for me and good results for them, it proved difficult to meet all the family’s needs, so I expanded services to include both diagnostic evaluations to help identify specific learning needs and strengths, as well as a process called Educational Therapy to help kids and adults use their individual cognitive strengths to overcome educational challenges.
It’s an amazing process to help students make sense of their processing challenges, harness them to navigate school, and reinvigorate the joy that can come from learning.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
One of the challenges I’ve encountered is advocating for families within slow moving or political educational models. Our educational bureaucracy adopts new acronyms and models of identifying and helping students, but often at the expense of the specialized teaching instruction that ultimately makes a difference. The federal government guarantees on paper a Free and Appropriate Public Education to all, and this is not a current reality. I’ve responded by presenting at national organizations and conferences and advocate with fellow educators to support students with learning challenges.
Please tell us about North Shore Learning Clinic.
At our learning clinic, we conduct neuropsychological and psychoeducational evaluations that documents a child, adolescent, or adult’s information processing strengths and weaknesses as they impact educational and social functioning. A comprehensive evaluation includes detailed information about cognitive aptitude, thinking skills, attention, memory, executive functioning, visual perceptual skills, phonological processing, oral language skills, and academic functioning in reading, written language, and mathematics. These quantitative psychometric measures are nationally normed and standardized, and because they are individually administered (instead of group-administered tests at school), qualitative approaches to individual items are integrated. They also demystify learning problems and stimulates clients’ awareness of their strengths so they can use them to overcome or compensate for areas of weakness. These evaluations can also be used to guide school services, such as an IEP or a 504 Plan.
We also offer Educational Therapy and Executive Functioning Coaching, which offers children and adults with learning disabilities and other learning challenges a wide range of intensive, individualized interventions designed to remediate learning problems and Executive Functioning (organizational) struggles.
At our learning clinic, we approach our evaluations and treatment with the psychometric precision of a published researcher/diagnostician, with theoretical orientations ranging from neuroscience to language-based learning disabilities, and the pragmatic recommendations of a classroom teacher.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If I had to start over, I would have catalogued the amazing insights I’ve learned from kids. I swear I learn as much from them as they from me. They help me look at the world differently. A five year old recently gave a shot at defining the unfamiliar word “Transparent” as, “I don’t know, maybe it’s if you move from your moms to your dad’s house?”
Contact Info:
- Address: 373 Park Avenue
Glencoe, IL 60022 - Website: www.learning-clinic.com
- Phone: 847-835-7500
- Email: jordi@learning-clinic.com
Image Credit:
Phil Goldman
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