Testimonials

I just wanted to say thank you for changing our family’s life with your hard work, insight and patience. Prior to your tutoring/life coaching, Brent struggled academically and found school to be a frustrating and unpleasant experience. He often acted out which led to poor grades and attitude. We feared that once Brent started Stevenson High School, he would be an angry, unhappy student. Brent is thriving in high school and has a B+ average. He has found a way to utilize his strengths and compensate for his weaknesses, which you taught him to do. As a direct result, he is a happy, well- adjusted teenager and we owe it in large part to you.

Sheryl has made such a positive impact academically with our son. With extreme patience and very sharp “teen” sense, she has built a relationship of trust and mutual respect. She can gauge just how much he needs to be encouraged, and when he has truly reached his studying limits. She has taught him the skills to gain academic independence and to motivate him to be an active and organized learner.

We reached out to Sheryl when our 15-year old sophomore son was struggling with grades as result of an inconsistent work ethic and feeling overwhelmed. Sheryl helped him to raise his grades in core classes from mostly C’s and D’s to B’s. We are grateful for her supportive, drama-free approach and helpful ways to better organize and track his work.

The realization that your child is struggling can be overwhelming. Our family will forever be grateful to Sheryl for coming into our lives and helping us when we didn’t know where to turn. Sheryl works primarily with your child, but understands that your child’s struggles can impact the whole family and is there to help. She has a gift of developing a rapport with each child, and understands how to help him or her gain confidence and learn the academic, behavioral, and organizational skills to succeed. Our child, who first worked with Sheryl in 5th grade, still stays in contact with her as a junior in college!

Everyone walked around our house as if under constant siege. I would dread the time of day when Joe would walk in the door from school each day, and feel guilty for feeling that way. One of the first changes I noticed was the immediate relief I felt after our first meeting with Sheryl. As I realized I could “hand over” to her, the day –to- day stress causing tension in the family, it freed us to working on creating a more positive environment in our home. Eventually there were more and more good days, more good than bad. Joe now had a home that felt “safe” to come home to where he was understood.

Our son has worked with Sheryl Roessler for the past 3 years. We have grown to know Sheryl not only professionally, but on a personal level as well. I am writing to express our pleasure at referring Sheryl as both and outstanding educator, but also as a person. Sheryl has a unique gift to relate with children so that they not only learn academically, but, develop positive study habits. Teaching children to trust their abilities and develop positive self-esteem, which Sheryl provides, is a lifelong gift. It is a pleasure to recommend Sheryl as an educational therapist. You can’t go wrong!

Sheryl has been a critical part of our son’s educational development. She quickly built up a strong rapport and helped to give him the structure and tools to be successful. We would highly recommend her to anyone who is looking to support his or her child’s learning experience.

“I am a parent of a young boy who is very quiet and has a harder time making friends than most others do, something that most kids take for granted. With that said, his social life is pretty quiet too. He had always cared about doing well in school and putting his best foot forward. He was involved in baseball and is even an umpire to this day. Once he started 7th grade, things became harder for him. He was struggling to stay organized with all his different assignments. As it got later in the school year, he became more frustrated as he became buried in homework. His grades started to drop, had missing assignments, and was unable to stay organized. He no longer believed in himself. It was clear that we needed to get him some help. That’s when we found Sheryl. I would describe her as our guiding light who gave us lots of hope. She took all the frustrations out of homework and helped get things back in order for our son. She was able to teach him the daily organizational skills he lacked, helping him gain the self-confidence he had lost along the way. Sheryl was able to put everything into perspective for him and our family. She taught him getting help did not mean he was stupid or dumb and was nothing to be ashamed of. She became a favorite Aunt to our son. He looked forward to seeing her every week. As he reached his goal with her, bringing his grades up, it became apparent it was going to be hard to let her go. But, knowing another child and another family is out there and needs her gives us pleasure. We know she will provide them with hope and possibility as she had done with our family. Sheryl Roessler is an angel of hope for any child who has things in their life to overcome.”

I highly recommend Sheryl Roessler as an educational therapist. She worked with my son, Jacob, during his freshman year of high school and the beginning of sophomore year. Jacob was pretty nervous about his classes freshman year, but Sheryl did an excellent job of building his confidence, helping him learn to advocate for himself, and assisting him with class work he found challenging. She also was able to immediately establish a good rapport and working relationship with him. He quickly began telling me, “Oh, I need to talk to Mrs. Roessler about (X) when she comes this week. The self-advocacy was something I was especially interested in Jacob learning as it was an issue his teachers had raised in his IEP meeting all through middle school. Sheryl helped Jacob understand when it was appropriate or necessary to speak to or email a teacher about a grade/problem/whatever as well as how to write the email or what to say when going into a meeting with a teacher. It sounds simple, but it really is a difficult task for many kids to muster; Jacob’s success in this area under Sheryl’s guidance has enabled him to keep up his efforts even though he no longer works with her. Sheryl helped Jacob with organizational and executive functioning tasks, such as how to get started with a long-term assignment, as well as writing assignments and studying for exams. I am quite proud to report that Jacob had a 3.5 GPA his second semester freshman year and will be attending Indiana University in the fall.

Sheryl worked with our high school aged son for just over two years, beginning at the end of the third quarter of his sophomore year through graduation in May 2015. We consider her to have been an enormous part of our son reaching his potential and regaining his confidence and self-esteem as it relates to academic life and life in general. We could not be more grateful for her support of our son. Our son is of substantially above average intelligence but was struggling in school, especially with long-term assignments and tests on an accumulation of material. He is also not inclined to ask for help. Some teachers viewed him as lazy or sullen, others as a nice young man who maybe didn’t put in the effort, others as lacking in organizational inclination or ability. Ultimately we had him tested professionally (and not with the support or assistant of our school district) starting just before the midpoint of his sophomore year of high school. It was determined that he had a processing deficit, which impacted his ability to take in rapid-fire information and to multitask (walk from the classroom, get the last academic point, hear and retain the homework assignment given as he was walking out the door and think about getting to his next class). What next? The testing practice that we used gave us three names of tutors and recommended that we also go through the special education office of our high school. Sheryl was one of the three. Honestly part of the reason she was chosen was because her schedule worked for us and she was available. We were extremely anxious to get something going and felt that we were too emotionally involved to be the right kind of support that our son needed. Even in a well-funded school district what they could provide to someone who they viewed with borderline needs was not going to be sufficient to support James. Sheryl was supportive of the school processes and encouraged James to access the resources the school did provide but her services along with his effort were the essential s to his success. Looking back Sheryl being the one who was available was one of our greatest blessings to date. She was unfailingly positive, communicative (with us and our son), and responsive. She engaged with our son and gained his trust. She is flexible. She is warm and kind. She gives of herself. She finds a way to make it work; it’s not about her way it’s about results. Our son is now looking forward to beginning his first year of college and is thrilled with the program he was admitted to. He worked hard to get this. Sheryl couldn’t do that for him. But she provided him with the one on one attention he needed to develop the study and organizational skills to produce his best work and did so in an unfailingly positive way. We cannot thank her enough!

When I reflect back on my sophomore year, I think how much of a lifesaver Sheryl was for me. It was a time where I was in over my head with class work and extracurricular activities and having someone to hold me accountable was not exactly what I wanted, but exactly what I needed. After working with her for three years, I can confidently say that I would not have made it this far without her kindness, support, and accountability. I would recommend Sheryl Roessler’s service to any student who feels like they just need a little extra nudge here and there.

Sheryl has been working with clients of mine for more than a decade. Sheryl understands the complexities of her clients and how to meet their needs. Sheryl quickly recognizes not only what needs her clients present with, but also how best to approach each one as an individual.

Sheryl can be an integral force in helping a child and family struggling with school and homework related issues.  Whether it’s about self-concept, confidence, or self-esteem related interference, ADHD and other learning difficulties, or power-struggles within the family, Sheryl is able to help the child and parents establish a balanced approach to the student working for themselves, and developing strategies and skills that will carry them into the future with a greater sense of mastery and competence.  IT has been my pleasure to coordinate services with her in a team approach and to refer clients to her for individual stand-alone support services- Sasha von Varga, LCSW (Child, Adolescent, Family, and Adult therapy Services).

I have found Sheryl’s work helpful in the following ways: Her work fills a niche by addressing a combination of factors that are essential to learning, but rarely addressed by educational specialists. She works with kids on how to learn. That is, her focus revolves around the planning and organization of study skills, time management, and classroom materials. A student’s ability to incorporate these skills makes them more effective and interested in learning. Sheryl also addresses the social/emotional component so typical with children and adolescents with real learning differences. Her encouragement helps them persist and focus on student’s strengths, raises hope and motivation, allowing them to access the learning strategies that she teaches. Her close collaboration and communication also ensures that we know about how a student learns connected to her interventions. Parents and kids enjoy working with her.

Sheryl accomplished so much with my son in a very short time. She taught him organizational and study skills he needed to navigate through elementary school and into junior high. After years of resisting homework and 6 months of working with Sheryl, my son got all A’s and was so proud of his accomplishment. Sheryl connected with my son so well, in a way that parents cannot when it comes to homework.