Our Mission
STRIDES, a Christian nonprofit educational program, provides individual academic instruction to children and youth who are having academic difficulty. In order to make services available to families of all economic levels, STRIDES employs a sliding fee scale for parents.

Our History
STRIDES grew out of The Reading Clinic which served hundreds of upstate children as a for-profit tutoring program for many years in the Greenville, SC, area. Gail Everett, director of The Reading Clinic, left to attend the University of Virginia for a Ph.D. in special education. Upon returning, Dr. Everett was chosen by the Board of Directors to be supervising director of STRIDES. The IRS granted 501(c)3 status in 2005, and STRIDES is registered as a charitable organization in South Carolina.

Although some organizations provide tutoring solely through volunteers, STRIDES uses a precisely trained staff. Our specialized program, Potentials®, is like speech therapy applied to reading. We do not emphasize many phonics "rules" for our students to remember, since many of them have short and long term memory problems. Instead we teach from a language base, relying on the motor abilities that most children have established.

Our instructors teach with compassion and empathy, while they encourage students through this rigorous program. Last year our students averaged one grade level of progress (reading or mathematics) for every 10.43 hours of instruction, and the gains in confidence are immeasurable.

How Potentials® Works!

Potentials reorganizes functions in the brain to:
Keep the letters in line
Follow letters with a natural flow
See words just like you say and hear them
Recognize syllables as easily as letters

Potentials develops perception through:
Integrating the left and right brain
Slowly timing the action of the eye, mouth and ear to coincide
Speeding sequence recognition
Transferring consciously learned skills to automatic perception
Teaching only what will be immediately used – then using it enough to make it automatic before going on

Potentials circumvents learning blocks by:
Using a completely fresh approach
Never overloading the brain’s processor
Having many different approaches to each skill
Breaking our confusing language into simple word families
Learning when to say what, without having to say a rule

Potentials builds motivation by:
Providing an environment where success happens quickly
Giving the right amount of challenge
Providing the right amount of support
Gradually increasing the level of self-reliance
Bringing previously unachievable goals within reach

Potentials fights attention deficit syndrome by:
Integrating many brain receptors at once
Leaving no room for distraction to enter
Monitoring frustrations levels
Changing activities frequently

Potentials builds comprehension by:
Leaving the brain free to concentrate on ideas
Expanding vocabulary
Developing the students own ideas
Building the confidence, “I can think.”
Filling essential knowledge blanks