Toronto Reading
And Writing Tutor

Mary Jennifer Payne​

Mary Jennifer Payne brings nearly 25 years of experience teaching students with a variety of learning disabilities – including dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia and ADHD – to her tutoring. After starting her teaching career in Southeast London, she returned to Canada to teach in the Toronto community of Regent Park, where she spent nearly two decades mainly in Special Education. A strong advocate for inclusion and equity, she carefully tailors each student’s program to reflect that individual’s strengths and needs and ensures that culturally-responsive and relevant resources are used. She utilizes the Barton Reading and Spelling Program and the Nessy Learning Programme, both of which are Orton-Gillingham based, as the foundation of her approach to supporting students with dyslexia.

Mary Jennifer also uses Foundations In Sounds which helps with auditory discrimination, auditory memory size and auditory sequencing skills. Payne is available for tutoring as well as educational advocacy for families, especially those navigating the public school system.

Mary Jennifer is an internationally-published writer and the author of many children’s and YA books. Her work can be found in Orca Press’s new ultra-readable hi-lo series and their hi-lo Soundings series, as well as Rubicon Publishing’s award-winning Boldprint series. She strongly believes in the importance of student voice and is passionate about approaching special educational exceptionalities from an asset-based lens.​

Hyejin Park

Hyejin Park has been teaching mathematics in the Korean and Canadian Public School systems since 2003. She now serves as a private math tutor and math consultant collaborating with teachers and parents to enhance math education.

Hyejin is skilled at connecting math concepts to practical, real-world scenarios, making math relevant for students. She excels at identifying areas where students need help and making new concepts easy to understand by relating them to what they already know. Hyejin prioritizes helping students understand the ‘why’ behind concepts, not just the ‘how’. She values making math enjoyable and accessible, and is dedicated to creating an engaging learning environment for her students. Seeing students succeed brings her great joy.

Heidi Siebert​

Heidi Siebert is a OCT certified teacher with 22 years of experience with the Toronto District School Board. Heidi graduated with a BA from Dalhousie University and then taught English to both adults and children in Japan. She then graduated with a BEd from Mount Saint Vincent University before moving to Toronto in 2000.

She has worked in bookstores and has worked as a private ESL tutor. Most of Heidi’s career as a teacher has been working as a classroom teacher at the Primary and Junior level, however, she has also worked as a Resource and ESL teacher in many different grades. Heidi has travelled the world extensively and uses the knowledge she has gained to better understand other people and how we all learn differently. Heidi feels learning is an ongoing process and has taken courses in Reading, teaching ELLs as well as Special Education to help enhance her career. She looks forward to tutoring students and helping them to develop a love of conversational English as well as English reading and writing.

Lucie Kybal-Syrovy

Lucie is a recently retired teacher from the Toronto District School Board with 32 years of experience teaching French language (Extended and Core programs) at the junior/intermediate level. In addition to French, she has taught all other subject areas at the J/I level during the course of her career. Lucie is passionate about education, art, travel, fitness, and food. She loves learning languages and about different cultures. She speaks Czech, English, French, and Spanish.

Lucie draws on her broad knowledge of pedagogy and curriculum and diverse cultural and instructional experience to develop a rich, structured and student-centred program which will engage students in their learning. She offers support at beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels in all the French language skill areas: listening comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing. She can help with grammatical and language structures, vocabulary-building, pronunciation, reading strategies, and the writing process. Lucie looks forward to tutoring one-on-one to encourage, guide, and support her students to develop their confidence and strengthen their abilities to understand and communicate in French, both orally and in writing.

Naomi Quarcoopome

Naomi’s approach to teaching is student centered and supports the creation of a shared learning space that is inclusive. She is an educator who cares about the all-around learning experience of her students. This includes building positive working relationships and understanding their readiness to learn.

After graduating from York University with a BEd and BA in Sociology, Naomi traveled to Australia and taught in Sydney’s public schools as an elementary teacher. She has a Masters Degree in Environmental Studies and is an OTC certified teacher with qualifications in Primary/Junior Education and secondary school qualifications in Senior Social Science and Environmental Science. Her experience with students also includes one-to-one tutoring and classroom teaching in Toronto’s public elementary schools.

Paula Quintana​

Paula Quintana is an educator in Toronto, with a specialization in Early Years education. She graduated from York University with a Bachelor of Education (specialization Early Childhood Education). She also attended the University of Ottawa, where she earned a Masters of Education in Education Counselling.

Upon returning to Toronto she was hired by the Toronto District School Board where she has worked in various positions in the classroom, ranging from Kindergarten to Grade 6 including Special Education and Health and Physical Education. Over the past 5 years, she has been centrally assigned. One of her roles was in Numeracy and Literacy to support students in grades 6 to 8 in the transition to Secondary school.

Currently she is working as a Early Literacy Intervention Teacher with Students in Kindergarten to Grade 2. She has extensive knowledge in early reading development. Paula is a responsive educator and approaches teaching from a student centered stance.​

Sherri Habermehl

Sherri Habermehl has been teaching in Saskatchewan since 2009 and has spent most of her career in Special Education. She taught with the Saskatoon Public School Division for the first 11 years of her career in a variety of settings including a regular classroom teacher (grade 3) and in an intensive needs special program for students with severe learning difficulties and disabilities. Sherri completed her university training at the University of Saskatchewan and has completed a B.Sc. in Physics and Math (2007), B.Ed. (2009), Post-Graduate Certificate in Special Education (2013), as well as a M.Ed. in Special Education (2015). Sherri currently teaches in a rural school division in Saskatchewan and lives on a farm with her husband and two children.

Sherri supports students with dyslexia and other reading difficulties with the Barton Reading & Spelling System, which is an Orton-Gillingham based, multi-sensory, direct, explicit, structured, and sequential program designed for intense literacy intervention. She uses the Foundation in Sounds program with students who are not yet ready to start the Barton program due to difficulties with auditory discrimination, auditory memory size, and auditory sequencing. Sherri is currently obtaining her Orton-Gillingham certification.

Cathy Loor

Cathy is currently a grade 1 and 2 French immersion teacher in Alberta. She has been a primary French immersion teacher for over 20 years. She recently finished her Master of Education with the University of British Columbia through the faculty of language and literacy where she strengthened her knowledge of best practices for teaching a second language and reading in French immersion. She is also Orton-Gillingham trained.

One of the things Cathy loves most about teaching primary students is the progress and excitement they show as they learn to read. She has worked with students with reading difficulties and dyslexia in the French Immersion context both in classroom settings as well as in small group settings providing interventions. She uses a Structured Literacy approach to teaching reading, with a focus on oral language comprehension in French to help her students learn to read.

Sanmi Desai

Sanmi completed her Masters degree in Civil Engineering from Mumbai University with being one of the top scorers of her batch. She is a Math enthusiast and has a keen interest in teaching and delivering her subject knowledge to students. Her experience with students includes classroom teaching in Dubai and one-on-one tutoring in Toronto. She has a very positive and patient approach to helping students master the subject. Her focus is to build student confidence when dealing with Math as a subject.

Cecil Dwyer

Cecil is a passionate and dedicated educator based in Toronto, Ontario. With 18 years of experience as a French teacher in the Toronto District School Board, he is committed to helping students excel in their French language skills. Cecil’s expertise includes working with students at various levels, including those in French Immersion programs and those with limited understanding of French.

As a bilingual educator fluent in both English and French, Cecil leverages his skills to create engaging and effective lessons. He consistently explores strategies to further enrich his teaching practices.

Cecil integrates the Science of Reading into his teaching methods, emphasizing a structured literacy approach to help students develop strong foundational reading skills in French. He combines evidence-based practices with engaging activities to support oral language comprehension, phonics, and vocabulary, ensuring his students build confidence and fluency in reading.

Cecil is deeply invested in the success of his students whether in classroom settings or through one-on-one tutoring. He is particularly passionate about creative learning approaches which make French come alive for his students.

Peter Della-Nebbia

We’re deeply saddened by the passing of Pete this past November. He died suddenly after a brief battle with lung cancer. Pete was an incredibly caring tutor who loved sharing his expertise in math with his students. He will be very missed.

Peter Della-Nebbia is a long-suffering Leafs fan, nerd, and math enthusiast. With scores of 95% plus in each of the three math subjects, his 93.5% overall grade ranked him 3rd in his high school graduating class of 300. He received his Bachelor of Engineering degree from McMaster University and was hired as a Systems Engineer by IBM Canada. After eight years with IBM, he started his own company to teach programming and software application development. Over a five-year period, he delivered over 900 days of technical in-class training to more than 7000 adult learners in Canada and the USA. He also started an eLearning company that taught programming and software development to tens of thousands of people all over the world. When working with young learners to help them understand a new math concept, he will first focus on the “why” by providing a brief history of the historical problems that inspired the math or a real-world application for that math concept.

His teaching philosophy is rooted in the belief that the most effective learning occurs in safe social settings where two or more people learn from each other. He understands the importance of connecting with his learners, earning their trust, and establishing a team approach to learning. His learners call him Coach Pete, and his approach is more “how do you think we should approach this problem” than “I lecture, you listen and take notes.”

Coach Pete has a knack for identifying missing foundational skills when working on a new math topic or technique and will often launch into an on-the-fly lesson that is customized to each person’s needs and level to build that foundational understanding.