a mission of honor
Story by Susan O'Connor, Photo by Courtney Fitzwater

Good is often born out of tragedy. Survivors search for purpose, then forge ahead for good with strong intentions. When her brother, Will Hester, died at the age of 22, Mary Margaret Scholtens did just that.

Along with her mother, Cherry Frierson, Scholtens formed APPLE (Alternative Programs Providing Learning Experiences) Group Inc., a non-profit that teaches educators, parents and other caregivers a multi-sensory approach for teaching the basic skills of reading to children with dyslexia, a learning disability that greatly impacted the life of their son and brother.

According to Scholtens, one in five children has trouble learning to read in spite of having normal intelligence, adequate instruction, no emotional disturbances and no sensory deficits. This difficulty in the traditional classroom translates into serious self-esteem issues in many cases.

The week her brother took his life, Scholtens was pregnant with twins and her oldest son, Nate, now 13, was 2-and-a-half. The stress of the event triggered the onset of labor. She also quickly became mother to her brother’s son, William, then age 1.

“We went from one to four children in a week,” she said. “I inherited a bright, wonderful son from my brother. It is amazing how God has worked through something terrible to bring good.”

A Jonesboro High School graduate, Scholtens met her husband, Jay, a Fort Smith native, at Hendrix College, where she earned a degree in elementary education. After graduating, Scholtens taught school in Jackson, Miss., while her husband attended law school there.

When they moved to Jonesboro in 1997, Scholtens began private tutoring. A child named Angelina was the initial impetus for Scholtens to begin to find a way to teach children with dyslexia to read.

“Nothing worked,” she said of her efforts with Angelina. “I was on a mission to teach this dyslexic child to read.”

Sholtens immersed herself in research and learned about the Orton-Gillingham Based Reading Intervention. She began to fly back and forth to Chicago to train with educators who were using this method.

In the fall of 1997, the mother-daughter team started APPLE Group as a support network for parents of children with dyslexia. The need was so great, Scholtens said, that the group met once a month for workshops and mutual support.

In 2000, experts in the field were brought in to help with local training.

“When Will died, we became very serious about it,” Scholtens said. “We requested any in-memory gifts of money to go to the APPLE Group. Scholtens aunt, Neville Bryan, whose husband retired as CEO of Sara Lee Foods, gave a gift of $25,000, which truly helped launch the non-profit.

Now, Scholtens and Frierson (who taught kindergarten for years and is herself dyslexic) have written a teaching manual for the method titled Connections for Dyslexia, a 10-year effort. They volunteer their time in local elementary schools and hold two to three 30-hour trainings a year for teachers, special educators, counselors, principals, tutors and parents or grandparents. The next courses will be Sept. 9-11 and 23-25 in the Childhood Services Building at Arkansas State University.

Scholtens explained that there is now a network of educators trained in the Orton-Gillingham method throughout the region. “If someone calls from anywhere in Arkansas and Tennessee, we can say ‘What region are you in and we can match you with a trainer.’”

“These are bright children and if you teach them the right way, it is amazing what they can accomplish,” Scholtens said with enthusiasm. “We take kids with the lowest scores and they end up at the top of the class. Teachers come to us and say, ‘What are you doing?’”

APPLE Group also began the APPLE Seed Program, an eight-year mission of the Jonesboro Junior Auxiliary, where trained JA volunteers work one-on-one with emergent readers at the Jonesboro Kindergarten Center. The tutors use a multi-sensory approach, for example using objects to teach the sound that a letter makes and sand trays to write the letters, allowing the child to imprint the letter and sound on the brain. Children are taught by hearing, saying, seeing and feeling letters and words. The APPLE Seed Program has been successfully replicated in the Chicago public schools, Scholtens said.

She is also active in the International Dyslexic Association and attends annual conferences. This year, she will head to Tucson to learn the latest in the field. “I’m not a researcher myself, but I can teach parents and others about the research.”

Though Scholtens has been instrumental in the success of APPLE Group, she is modest and gives her mother most of the credit.

“My mom is the heart of APPLE Group. It has really become her life mission. Jay and the kids are also supportive.

“I do it to honor Will. It has been my ministry — to help those other Wills out there who are so bright and have so much to offer, so they can get through school with their self esteem intact to do all the wonderful things that they are meant to do. Where there is a ‘Will,’ there is a way.”