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As a teacher of severely handicapped teenagers for many years, Patricia Lear has often had to invent her
own materials. Patricia's students had the capabilities of five-year-olds scholastically with a Backstreet Boys
social mentality. No existing materials seemed to fit their needs.
SightPhonics was written out of guilt. The main reading program used with her students was one which taught the
things that would have no use in real life. Though it did help them keep their minds and imaginations moving,
it did little to provide them with "real living" skills.
So she wrote a book accompanied with an audio CD in effort to teach her students the letter names. They
succeeded so quickly that she decided to teach them the letter sounds. Again the success was so fast that
Patricia decided to move on to simple words. As they kept coming to her for more and more reading, she had to
provide more to keep up with their demands. Riding a wave of success, she finally decided to plan and bring to
fruition a complete program for all learners. The result was SightPhonics.
Then one day a former coworker of hers was telling Patricia how upset she was that four of her students
were returning to her Adult Basic Education class for the next semester. They had been in her class for the
entire year and despite her efforts, she was not able to help them. Her teaching friend utilized every program
she could, sent them to library tutor systems and used computers, but all to no avail. She was at a loss about
what to do with them, but knew she couldn’t send them away. Despite thinking that it possibly might be too
repetitious and simple for adults, Patricia offered her original program to her friend.
In the first 6 months, all four students made their state benchmarks twice. The facility, which gets $199 for
each benchmark, made about $1600 and decided to buy their own copy.
It was Salinas Valley State Prison that changed everything. Patricia's friend was a former teacher there
and she encouraged her (repeatedly) to bring the program to them. To Patricia's shock the head of education at
the prison purchased the program immediately after she concluded her presentation. This decision was of major
importance because he had to obtain special permission to purchase the necessary CD players for use at the
prison (the inmates make tattoo machines and other sorted items out of them). By knowing this, she was well
aware of what he had to go through to bring the program to the prisoners. She notes that it was "his
inspiration that inspired me."
Today we sell SightPhonics globally through the Internet and catalogs and produce it through a work
program utilizing the same handicapped population that originally brought it about. SightPhonics continues to
bring stories of success and Patricia dearly loves them all. And it all started with a little bit of guilt and
motivation!
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