Our son Joseph is a happy, friendly and confident kid. He’s very smart and loves asking deep questions. Whenever he meets new people he starts chatting with them and they can’t understand why Jojo is in a “special Ed” school. After he repeated kindergarten twice and couldn’t really sing the ABCs correctly, we knew something was up. At that time, I met with some of the amazing therapists at Yeshivah Prep. They sat with Jojo for about 30 minutes or so. They gave me a few possible diagnoses but the third one shocked me. They said that Joseph could possibly be dyslexic. I was a little panicked but moved forward to get him a more detailed evaluation where we learned that he was in fact dyslexic. He went to a city school for 2 years where he learned a lot but something was missing there. On the last day of his second year in that school I picked up Jojo for a fun day in the city. I asked him how he liked his school year overall. He looked at me and said “mom I really want to learn Hebrew”. We didn’t think twice. We called Yeshivah Prep and started the process of switching schools. He wanted to learn how to pray like his dad and brothers and we didn’t want to deprive him of that. Yeshivah Prep’s warm and loving atmosphere is what makes Jojo walk into school everyday happy and excited to learn. He’s learned to love reading and is actually excited about books. He loves learning Sephardic prayers and pizmonim and all of the community traditions along with the special education he needs and really cannot get anywhere else!!
Melissa Soffer
