My Story

From Teacher to Online Reading Tutor

Justine Forelli

Online Reading Tutor

My name is Justine Forelli online reading tutor. I have worked with 100’s of beginning and struggling readers.

I started off as a Waldorf teacher believing a holistic natural approach to reading was the answer to everything.

My first daughter easily learned to read with this method.

But my second daughter showed signs of a struggling reader from preschool. I did not want to admit it and thought she just needed more time. By third grade, I finally had to admit that she was not learning to read.

This is when I began learning about struggling readers. The gap can be closed with a direct, systematic, explicit approach.

Her success with overcoming her reading difficulties motivated me to study reading intervention and to obtain traditional teaching credentials.

As the English reading teacher in an Italian bilingual school, I applied my interventions to struggling readers. I learned to articulate language concepts to young children to help them learn to read and write.

And then the pandemic struck, and we were all on Zoom. I started holding one-on-one sessions with my struggling readers. It was so powerful. Their success in learning to read through direct intervention online convinced me to become an online reading tutor.

For the first two years, I used a structured literacy approach which was very effective for almost all of my students. But I wanted a way to accelerate their learning.

In 2023, I began tutoring students in reading, spelling, and writing using EBLI (Evidence-Based Literacy Instruction). EBLI is a “speech-to-print” or Structured Linguistic Literacy approach which accelerates student learning and literacy outcomes. 

Helping all beginning and struggling readers read accurately and fall in love with reading using a Structured Linguistic Literacy approach is my purpose.

Contact me for a Free Consultation/Assessment.