"No matter what it looks like, most people - parents, children, teens, adults - want to do well and are doing the best they can. When they struggle, it’s not about not caring, or lack of motivation or laziness, it’s because something is getting in the way.
Once we really identify what that is, things can change."
- Jill and David Stowell
About Stowell Learning Centers
Through targeted brain training, we have helped thousands of students over the last 35 years to permanently eliminate struggles associated with dyslexia, auditory processing, and other learning disabilities.
Our goal for each student, regardless of age, is that he/she becomes as comfortable and independent a learner as possible. In order to do this, we work closely with parents, communicate with schools, and are continually seeking to find and implement the most effective, research-based, efficient strategies and programs. Stowell Learning Centers work with a very comprehensive continuum of learning skills that allows us to create programming for each student that is very specific to his or her needs.
We work one-to-one with students in a positive, caring environment to provide proven, brain-based instruction that is targeted to their specific needs and learning style.
About JILL Stowell
Founder and Author, Jill Stowell, holds California teaching credentials in elementary education and learning handicaps, an MS degree in Education, a California Resource Specialist Certificate, and Dyslexia Remediation Specialist Certification. She taught seven years in a public school in both regular and special education programs prior to opening the learning center.
Jill is the host of the weekly LD Expert Live podcast; and the author of several books including Number 1 bestseller, At Wits End: A Parent’s Guide to Ending the Struggle Tears and Turmoil of Learning Disabilities. She is an international speaker, has trained hundreds of public and private educators in specialized learning programs and provides consultation and clinical support to a worldwide network of learning centers working to eliminate learning challenges.
A Letter From Our Founder, Jill Stowell
Every day, I meet parents who are literally at their wit's end just trying to cope and help their kids survive school. It can be extremely frustrating and lonely trying to find answers.
As a public school Learning Disabilities Specialist many years ago, I knew there had to be more that could be done for students who struggle in school. I was a very good, very dedicated teacher with a Master's degree in education, but some of my students still weren’t learning as easily as they should. I was SURE that there were answers that just weren’t being taught or explored by our schools.
The heartbreak for me was watching both kids and their families suffer. I’m talking about students who have average or often much higher than average intelligence spending hours on simple homework, then failing anyway. And despite their best efforts, they often get called lazy or unmotivated. Eventually, many of them just give up. The rest limp through the school system with their self-esteem slowly crushed and their potential wasted. It is devastating to the students, and can even tear families apart. So I left the schools in search of something better; some real answers to unlocking the intelligence and competence that lay hidden in these kids.
Frankie is a perfect example of a boy with tons of potential, whose learning challenges impacted his choices and most likely his future. Frankie was smart and charismatic, but he was also, at 12-years old, a tough kid, already entrenched in a street gang. As a special education teacher in the public school Frankie was coming to me because he couldn’t read. I really liked him and I promised him I would teach him to read. But I couldn’t. I didn’t know why such a smart boy couldn’t read and my very best efforts didn’t make a diffirence.
I didn’t know how to get to the root of the problem. In fact, I didn’t even know there was a “root” that I should be looking for.
Frankie didn’t believe he could learn, and I hate to think where that took him in his life. But somehow, I knew that couldn’t be right. When Frankie got passed along to 7th grade, I began to search out the experts who were doing the research on the brain, learning, and attention.
In 1984, I opened Stowell Learning Center for children and adults, who, like Frankie, were smart, but struggling and not getting the kind of help that would make permanent changes.
In the past 30 years we have helped over 5,000 students and their families overcome the devastation of learning problems. Our students have gone from special education to graduation with honors, to college, and many even have masters and doctorate degrees.
Here is my promise to you: There are real and permanent solutions to learning problems and I want to do everything I can to help you first to understand, and second to get the help you are looking for.