Why we created LUZ
“There’s a look some children carry in their eyes—a quiet kind of hiding. You don’t notice it at first. But once you’ve seen it, you never forget.”
For years, I worked across Kindergarten to Second Grade, helping students with reading, decoding, fluency, numbers—whatever they needed. I supported teachers, crafted personalized learning plans, and celebrated each tiny win with the joy it deserved. Struggling learners were part of every class. But in 2022, everything changed.
That year, I had a first-grade class of 18 students. Most were thriving. They raised their hands eagerly and just needed guidance to grow. But three children—three unforgettable souls—would reshape everything I believed about education. To protect their privacy, I’ll call them Maria, Alejandra, and Luis.
María
Maria never looked me in the eyes. When it came time for phonics or grammar, she’d quietly raise her hand to go to the bathroom. Her eyes were often down, her hands busy fidgeting. But I noticed. I always noticed.
She was a little artist. Her drawings were beautiful and full of feeling. I began building trust, day by day. I told the class, “Your job is to learn. My job is to teach. And if something I say doesn’t make sense, it’s my responsibility to find a better way—your way.” I wasn’t just saying it for them. I was saying it for María. And she heard me.
Soon after, we began tutoring. I asked her mom for permission to keep her after school. Her mom agreed. Maria showed up every single day, quietly determined. She did every activity I gave her. Practiced every sound. Wrote every word. And she started improving. I saw it. I felt it.
Then one afternoon, her mother picked her up. She laughed and said: “How’s my little donkey doing?” Then, looking right at Maria, added: “I don’t know what happened. My other kids were fine. She’s just the slowest one.”
I felt my stomach drop. Maria stood there, hearing every word.
Her mother wasn’t cruel—just… lost. Apologizing for her daughter’s difference like it was a defect. I smiled gently and said, “Please don’t call her that. She’s incredibly smart. She works harder than anyone. The problem isn’t her—it’s us. We just haven’t found her way yet. But we will.”
The next day, I sat next to Maria and said: “I don’t agree with what your mom said. You are not what she called you. You are smart. And we are going to prove it—together. But I need you to trust me and do everything I ask you to do. Will you do that?”
She didn’t answer. She just burst into tears and threw her arms around me. She was six years old.
From that day forward, we were a team. We worked through sounds and syllables, traced lines, broke down language piece by piece—building it up again in a way that made sense to her. There was no textbook for this. No boxed program. Just the two of us—and a method I built as we went.
Weeks passed. She rose from a non-reader to Level 8.
Then one day, during grammar time, something magical happened. Maria looked at me, smiled, and gently nodded. She raised her hand. She wanted to read. And she did.
She read the whole sentence aloud in front of the class—for the first time ever. The room burst into applause. Every child clapped for her. Cheered for her. She beamed. She wasn’t hiding anymore. She was shining.
Maria kept growing. She began finishing her work early, asking for new words, writing stories. When her mom came to me later, she said, “I don’t know what happened. She’s always reading now. Always working. Thank you.”
I just smiled. And I looked at Maria. And I knew—this is what we’re here to do. By the end of the year, Maria reached the expected reading level of 20. But more importantly, she believed in herself.
LUZ was born out of this journey. It was built for the Marias of the world: the children who are mislabeled, misunderstood, and too often left behind, not because they can’t learn—but because we haven't yet taught them in the way they deserve.
Alejandra
Alejandra walked into my classroom with the kind of quiet that wraps around a child like armor.
She had a visible speech impairment—one that made it nearly impossible to articulate full words. Most adults couldn’t understand her. Most specialists couldn’t reach her. But her classmates? Somehow, they always knew what she meant. Children have this beautiful, intuitive way of listening beyond words. They’d step in, translate her intent, and fill in the gaps adults had long given up trying to decode.
I didn’t want her to feel singled out. So early on, I told the whole class my made-up secret: “You know, I’m partially deaf. So if I ask you to repeat something, it’s not your fault—it’s just me needing a little extra help.”
That secret bought Alejandra space. It bought her dignity.
At the time, Alejandra was receiving speech therapy—in English. She didn’t speak English at all.
She could write well when I dictated slowly in Spanish, but free writing? Her words were nearly unreadable. Her speech, her writing, her learning—all being measured by tools that didn’t match who she was.
So we flipped the script. I leaned into her strengths and built a path forward that made sense for her I taught her firs to write and then to read. We started slowly. Very slowly. I broke every word into syllables—Spanish syllables, the core unit of our language—and we practiced over and over. At first, it was me doing the talking and her doing the writing. She was cautious, careful. Her face would light up as soon as she could match the syllable consonant and vowel. We traced letters, built patterns, connected sounds. Then we reversed it. I would say a word. She would repeat it—slowly, with intention—and then write it, one syllable at a time.
And week by week, something incredible happened. She got faster. More confident. She didn’t need as much support. Her syllables became words. Her words became sentences. Her sentences began to mean something—to her, to me, and to everyone around her.
By the end of the school year, Alejandra had gone from a non-reader to Level 18.
But that’s not what I remember most.
What I remember most is her IEP meeting. The specialist was considering recommending she be placed in a separate special education institution. She claimed Alejandra couldn’t answer simple questions, identify key elements in a text, or even speak clearly about herself.
I sat there stunned.
The truth was: Alejandra could do all those things. But only in the language she spoke. And none of the professionals evaluating her spoke Spanish.
She had been misdiagnosed by the very system meant to serve her—penalized not for her disability, but for the fact that she was being serviced in a language that wasn’t her own.And I am sure the specialists were trying to support and provide Alejandra with the tools they thought she needed.
Her mother was terrified. The thought of sending her daughter to a school that couldn’t meet her true needs kept her up at night. When she heard how much progress Alejandra had made in our classroom—how far she’d come—her eyes filled with tears.
“Gracias, maestra,” she whispered.
Alejandra’s story is why LUZ exists. Because students shouldn’t have to be “fixed” by systems that never spoke their language. Because interventions shouldn’t push children further from the classroom—they should bring them in. Because every child—regardless of speech, language, or learning profile—deserves to be understood first, before being evaluated.
LUZ was built to ensure that no child like Alejandra is ever labeled incorrectly again.
Luis
Luis was the kind of student who makes you stop and think: something bigger is happening here.
He barely spoke. Not because he didn’t want to, but because speech itself was difficult. His words came out in fragments—sometimes unintelligible, sometimes just… absent.
He didn’t write—not in the traditional sense. When given a lined sheet of paper, he would draw circles, lines, spirals—everywhere. Then he’d erase them, do them again, and repeat the cycle. There was no form, no structure. He didn’t follow the lines, didn’t trace shapes, didn’t even try to form letters. He rejected practice entirely—both at school and at home. Letters, syllables, phonics—he shut all of it out.
But he loved math. Not just loved it—he excelled at it. Quick mental calculations, strong number sense—he was one of the fastest in the class. During group problem-solving activities, he’d raise his hand before I even finished reading the question.
Math gave him confidence. Language had taken it away.
I tried everything that had worked with other students. I encouraged him. I built a full intervention plan that started from the very beginning: how to draw a line, form a curve, make a circle with intention. We had to completely deconstruct and rebuild his understanding of symbols. Even writing his own name was a challenge.
I sat down with his mother. I trained her personally on the program I had created for him. I explained the sequence, the reasoning, the research behind it. I organized it all into a binder, step by step, and asked her to commit to working with him at home while I supported him at school. She agreed. Every day, we worked together from both ends, slowly helping Luis make sense of letters the way he had made sense of numbers.
Progress was slow. But it came.
By the end of the school year, Luis could:
– Write within the lines (something he wouldn’t even attempt before)
– Form clear letters and write simple sentences
– Read at Level 8 — a huge leap from where we had started
No, he didn’t meet the official reading benchmark for first grade. But if you knew where he began, you’d understand that what he achieved was nothing short of extraordinary.
With Luis, something else happened too. In a meeting with the specialists, there was a discussion about his ability to comprehend text. They claimed that since he could understand a story when it was read to him, he couldn’t be diagnosed with dyslexia. They didn’t even consider evaluating him. And we were talking about a seven-year-old child in first grade who couldn’t write his full name. I stopped. And I started asking questions—refuting their conclusions with scientific evidence.
I referenced research about the many ways dyslexia can present, how its expression is diverse and highly individualized, how dyslexia manifests in Spanish, and how comprehension does not rule out a decoding disorder.
But the root of the problem always led us back to the same point: many of the specialists did not speak Spanish, and they were doing the best they could with the training they had received.
That’s when I understood the depth of the problem. Many educators and specialists are trained within monolingual frameworks.
They’re taught to identify signs of dyslexia based on how English works—but bilingual students, especially Spanish-speaking ones, show different indicators. And they need different tools.
That meeting was a turning point for me.
Because of Luis, I made a decision that changed my life:
I would go back to school. Not just to understand him, or to finally answer all my questions about how to help him and what was causing this group of symptoms—but to fight for students like him.
I studied Clinical Neuropsychology. I received advanced training in Dyslexia and Dyscalculia. And I studied in Spain, where Spanish is spoken authentically.
Luis didn’t fail the system. The system failed him.
He had brilliance inside him—he still does. But without the right tools, the right language, and the right assessments, he was almost written off.
LUZ was created to ensure that never happens again.
For every student who has been misdiagnosed, mislabeled, or overlooked because the tools weren’t built for them, we are building something better.