I am very passionate about teaching reading with a structured and multi-sensory approach. I'm a huge advocate for students who struggle to learn to read. I am also a mom to my dyslexic son, and teacher of many, very intelligent, and gifted dyslexic students. Not all my students have a formal diagnosis of dyslexia. If you have a child who struggles to learn to read and they're just not "getting it" in their current learning environment, we'd be happy to help them become successful.
I love Jesus. I am married to my best friend and we have two cool kiddos. We love to spend time with our big family and go on adventures together.
Romans 8:37-39
Hi! My name is Ashley Schell and I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to work at Upstate Literacy! I have worked with children of all ages, but have mostly worked with pre-K up to 2nd grade students. For a little over 13 years I served the military community overseas in Germany as a civilian teaching students. It was such a great experience to serve families from all over the world, and to guide them not only by teaching but by helping them through different life experiences that the military life brings. While overseas I took as many face-to-face college courses that were offered on base through Central Texas College in elementary education, and then finished my degree with Liberty University and obtained my bachelor’s degree. I have been back in the Upstate since 2017 and since then married my wonderful husband, Chase. We have 3 fur babies Lex, Reesie, and Maverick who are always keeping us on the go! I currently teach 2nd grade at a Chinese immersion school in Greenville which is perfect for me since I love to learn about different countries and languages! I look forward to meeting all of you soon and guiding your little ones on their road to becoming stronger readers!
Hi! My name is Kristen Burgess and I am blessed to join the Upstate Literacy team. I have a B.S from Lander University and M.Ed. from Western Carolina University. I am a recently retired reading interventionist with Greenville County Schools and also have taught in K4-K5 classrooms in Beaufort County. I am excited to have the opportunity to work with older grade levels as well at Upstate Literacy.
My husband Gary and I are both from the upstate. I am from Woodruff and he is from the Berea area of Greenville. We have two grown daughters, Cayce and Carey, and two grandchildren. I love to spend time with friends and family, read and travel with my favorite vacation spot being Key West. I look forward to working with my tutoring students to be an encouraging and supportive partner in their growth and love for reading!
My name is Gena Kearse and I am so excited to be working with Upstate Literacy under Andrea Bishop's leadership. Louisiana State University is my alma mater and other teaching certifications I received at Clemson. I have training and experience in structured literacy and have been a special education teacher for 20 years and am passionate about teaching children in reading, writing or math.
My husband and I live in Landrum and on weekends we enjoy exploring new areas to ride bikes. I have recently retired from the public school system and have a list of so many things I have been waiting to do ”once I have time”. I do have 12 grandchildren with tons of energy so I’m sure they will be waiting for me to take them swimming, hiking and mountain biking!
All of our tutors are trained and are experienced in a structured linguistics approach (speech-to-print) that's very effective for beginning readers, as well as for struggling readers.
We use a streamlined pathway to get students reading quicker.
Mrs. Andrea has completed 95 hours of training in Orton-Gillingham under a Fellow of the Orton Academy. She also has extensive teaching experience with the OG method for struggling readers at the first public school in SC explicitly for dyslexic students and/or the characteristics of it.
Reading: Trained in Lively Letters™ with Reading with TLC. Lively Letters™ is a research-based and clinically-proven, multi-sensory reading program that uses: embedded Imagery; mouth, hand, and body cues, music; and funny Mnemonic stories to help teach individual and multi-letter sounds and names, and takes students into reading and spelling.