Meet the Staff at DRC!

Everyone meet Elizabeth!  She is the Barton Training Manager and a Reading and Spelling Tutor.  She has been here for 15+ years. She was one of the first tutors hired by our founder, Nancy Menn. Prior to joining DRC, she was between jobs and volunteering. She has worked as a literacy tutor, math tutor, library assistant, and bookstore clerk. Her hobbies include attending contacts and plays, making music at home, and singing in a choir. She loves to read and write poetry and fiction.

Why do you tutor?

“I tutor because I know I am helping these students with not just their reading and spelling but their confidence as well.”

What keeps you at DRC?  How does tutoring make you feel?

“Students keep me on my toes! Each student is unique, so there’s always something new. I also train the other tutors, and that’s a rewarding challenge to meet each tutor where they’re at and train them to be the best tutor they can be. Tutoring is challenging, gratifying, maddening, joyful, and enormously rewarding. I always feel I need to improve my skills to reach each and every student.”

Can you highlight an experience at DRC that brought you reward (i.e., graduate, an ‘ah-ha’ moment, a compliment from a student or parent)?

“I remember one time the lightbulb went off for an 8th grade. I was teaching him about prefixes and suffixes. He realized that longer words aren’t a series of letters but chucks: syllables, prefixes, and suffixes. His reading and spelling ramped up after that.”