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Colleen Cubberley, M.A.
Colleen Cubberley, M.A.
Dyslexia Consultant
Barton-approved Dyslexia Screener
Certified EBLI instructor
Academic Tutor: Reading, Writing, Math
AZ Certified Teacher: K-8 & Special Education (Deaf Ed) K-12
Certified Barton Reading & Spelling Tutor
Colleen is a student-centered educator passionate about making learning accessible, meaningful, and empowering for all students. She began her professional teaching career after earning her Master’s degree in Special Education—Deaf Education from the University of Arizona in 1999, following her Bachelor of Science in Family Sciences—Early Childhood and Elementary Education from Brigham Young University in 1996.
Her experience spans teaching reading and writing across K–12 settings and at the college level. As a homeschooling educator, she has guided her own children through a full K–12 education, with her youngest graduating in 2026. Her work with students with dyslexia and autism spectrum disorder—both within her private tutoring business and with her own children—has further strengthened her ability to individualize instruction and meet diverse learning profiles.
She is passionate about literacy and realizing her formal education didn’t address effective writing instruction for students, she sought out methods and curriculum for how to teach the writing skills needed to create independent strong writers. Drawing from the 6 Traits of Writing, initially and then discovering the Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW), she implements structured, scaffolded approaches that equip students with the tools they need to become confident, capable writers. She is dedicated to fostering a learning environment where students feel supported, challenged, and empowered to take ownership of their growth.
We are excited to grow as we share our passion for effective and efficient reading intervention and empower more students in closing the gap in reading achievement!!
Meet our Awesome Tutors
Meet our Awesome Tutors
Rita Santos
Rita Santos
Rita has been a reading interventionist and a private tutor for more than 18 years. While working at a public charter she became frustrated that the same students were referred for intervention year after year. After researching possible reasons and solutions for their stalled progress, she discovered the traditional way of teaching reading that started with written words known as print to speech was not the best way to learn to read so she became trained in Reading Simplified and certified in EBLI, both of which use the sounds of speech first (speech to print). This speech first approach makes more sense to students so they make gains much more quickly; they often become confident readers in just a few months. Rita loves the joyful look on students’ faces when they accurately and confidently read their first word, sentence or paragraph and start to believe that they CAN read.
Katie Metz
Katie Metz
Katie has an Elementary Education degree from Utah State University and is a certified teacher. She has over 10 years of experience working in classrooms with students ages PreK through 8th grade. While working in schools was fulfilling, Katie knew working one-on-one with struggling readers was her passion. She loves instilling confidence and a joy of reading into each student. Trained in Evidenced Based Literacy Instruction (EBLI), Katie loves seeing the gains students can make with the speech-to-print method. In her spare time, Katie enjoys spending time with her family, visiting the beach, exercising and, of course, reading!
Barbara Waters
Barbara began her journey working with children early in life, which led her to earn an Elementary Education Degree with a specialization in Early Childhood from the University of Nebraska at Omaha (1994). She went on to teach children attending a special needs Preschool, in kindergarten, elementary age, and Head Start. After moving to Arizona in 1996, she received an Arizona teaching certificate (2000).
As her own children graduated from (homeschool) high school, and have become adults, Barbara continued her influence and began teaching and tutoring non-speaking autistic children. This experience has re-emphasized the key premise of presuming competence when teaching all students. After discovering Evidence Based Literacy Instruction (EBLI), she began her training and has enjoyed the holistic effective approach EBLI offers the students she has taught.
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