The Fastest Way to Fill Your Practice

1. You must have at least a 4-year degree from an accredited university. (A Master’s Degree or higher is preferred.)
2. You need to pass the Lexercise Clinician Qualification Test to demonstrate your knowledge of the structure of written English and of the structured literacy intervention methodology, consistent with the International Dyslexia Association’s Knowledge and Practice Standards. (If you don’t already have this knowledge, you can gain it through Lexercise Courses 1 & 2, which can take the place of the Qualification Test.)
3. You need to have had a practicum of at least 100 hours of supervised clinical intervention in structured literacy in a one-to-one therapeutic setting (as opposed to in a group or classroom application) where you worked with at least 3 heterogeneous students, none of whom are your own child. (If you don’t have this, you can gain it through the Lexercise Practicum, and it is also available through private training institutes like ALTA.)
4. Unless you wish to join an existing therapist group, you need to have a business entity, e.g. a sole proprietorship, limited liability company, partnership, corporation or a non-profit agency. (Our current Teletherapy Partners are often looking for qualified associates to work for them, so if you prefer, we can put you in touch with those groups that are hiring after you’ve taken the qualification test.)
5. You agree to be trained in, and comply with, the Lexercise teletherapy procedures, consistent with the American Telemedicine Association’s Telemental Health teletherapy guidelines,
6. You agree to acquire and maintain the necessary hardware and software. (See technical requirements below.)

You can see a demo of Lexercise that we made for prospective teletherapy partners on our How It Works page. It walks you through the organization of the Lexercise Structured Literacy Curriculum and gives some examples of lesson teaching resources for use in online sessions.

You can find a detailed list of technical requirements here, but below are the highlights of what you will need:

• A dependable, high-speed internet connection, adequate for video-conferencing. Our general suggested minimums are upload and download speeds of +5 Mbps. (Test your internet speed here.)
• A modern computer(s) with a webcam and a headset with a microphone.
• A quiet space with professional video backdrop (e.g. no bed or kitchen in the background).
• A Google calendar (shared with Lexercise for scheduling clients with you).
• A general comfort and confidence with online technology.

You have to take the qualification test (Course 1 and 2 Test Out Exams) and prove your expertise because we have to know that the professionals who use Lexercise have the knowledge and skills needed to provide effective structured literacy treatment and use the Lexercise software. We do this because research has repeatedly shown a correlation between clients’ therapy progress and their therapist’s knowledge, and we are committed to getting the best and fastest results for our clients.

For more information see this article.

We have many people who want to work for Lexercise therapist groups or to create their own therapist groups, and we have very limited time. Our time must be focused on answering the questions of truly qualified professionals who are serious about joining this talented and like-minded community.

If you are serious and qualified, please show us by taking the Lexercise Qualification Test. (There is a study guide for it on the link so you can see what this test covers.)

This is when you will get all the details!

1. After you pass the qualification test we will be in touch with you to congratulate you and ask you to complete the Teletherapist Application. This is a formality to allow us to check your education and experience.
2. We will enroll you in the Lexercise TOUR for Prospective Teletherapy Partners, which will answer most all of your questions about how Lexercise teletherapy works.

We’ve worked hard to make sure the tour is thorough and can answer all you need to know about how Lexercise Teletherapy works. It covers:

• The components of the Lexercise platform including the clinician, parent and child interfaces
• How parents pay you for services and the financial side of being a Lexercise teletherapist
• How much money you’ll be able to make
• Considerations around having your own practice or joining an existing one

We have developed a thorough Lexercise Teletherapy Training Course for qualified professionals, and in this training program you will learn everything you need to do online therapy. It covers:

• The ins and outs of providing therapy through web conferencing
  • Technology training
  • Your online image
  • Building rapport and engaging the client
  • Delivering a session
  • Troubleshooting
• Planning and initiating Lexercise teletherapy
• Delivering therapy & supporting deliberate practice
  • The Lexercise curricula
  • The Lexercise assessment tools (We have over 15 assessment tools covering word structure, comprehension, verbal expression, text reading and writing)
  • Our clinician manual
• Business management

It’s Faster

A couple of decades ago our founder, Sandie Barrie Blackley, discovered that, compared to the old model that required the client to come into the office for both direct instruction and practice, she could get faster results by including a way to do monitored, daily, structured practice every day at home. She found that using a once-a-week live, direct instruction session with the parent and child and then empowering the parent to lead the child in a little structured practice each day she could more than halve treatment time from 2.5 years on average to about 1 year.

Today, using online technology and the latest in research science, we’ve lowered that 2.5 year average for client remediation down to months (usually 1 to 2 semesters).

It’s More Thorough

Not all structured literacy intervention is updated to conform to the latest reading science research. In particular, we know know there are three essential elements that predict progress (The 3-Legged Stool). Paper-based products can not support treatment fidelity or accountability the way the Lexercise platform can. With reading science moving at such a fast pace it’s important for both the curriculum and the therapist to be able to adopt best-practices as soon as they are proven. The Lexercise platform makes that possible.

Clients Are More Likely to Comply with Best Practices

Let’s face it: structured literacy intervention takes work and parent commitment. If you are seeing clients in the clinic, it’s not always easy to get parents to keep their appointments 2-3 times-a-week.  Plus, it is often a challenge for parents to be consistent about completing any practice you might assign between sessions. This lack of consistency is one of the main reasons for limited or slow progress.

Lexercise improves treatment consistency in several ways.  First, it’s much easier for parents to commit to and honor a single, weekly therapy session that they can do from their computer, no matter where they are.  There’s no commuting or taking off work, no cancellations due to inclement weather. All they need to do is go to a quiet room and turn on the computer.  Second, the child’s daily practice games don’t require supervision, so all the parent has to do is make sure the child logs in and gets started for 15 minutes of meaningful, daily practice. Third, the parent-led activities are straightforward and easy to complete in 10-15 minutes a day, which even the busiest of families can generally manage. And finally, the tracking software holds everyone (the therapist, the parent and the child) accountable for doing their part so that the therapy is “hitting on all cylinders” all the time and truly setting a world standard for effectiveness.

This is a common question because in traditional Orton-Gillingham therapy a therapist sees the client for a one-hour session twice per week. During a session the therapist teaches the client new material (direct instruction) and does practice activities with the client.

In contrast, Lexercise splits the direct instruction and practice. You see the client once per week in a video session where you teach them new material and set up their practice. The other days of the week your client practices and reinforces what they learned from you in the live session by doing games and activities through their online account. (Lexercise clients get on average 400% more practice than if they were doing a twice-a-week traditional O-G session. That’s over 600 response challenges per week!)

All of this allows you to focus your live, one-on-one video session on teaching new lesson material and using your expertise to address each client’s individual needs because the Lexercise platform is providing your client much more practice than would be humanly possible in the traditional O-G model.

We’ve built Lexercise to let you focus on what you enjoy and do best, helping children. Our platform lets you minimize the things you don’t enjoy, like chasing clients for payment and record keeping so that you can focus on providing the best possible therapy.

The benefits of using Lexercise are:

• Major time savings:  We have more than halved the time it takes to deliver structured literacy therapy each week. Read on to see how.
• Billing:  Lexercise does all the billing and dunning for you. No more chasing clients for payment. Your clients pay up front so you are never left with an unpaid session, and payments are deposited into your group’s bank account once a month. (For therapists working for a therapist group, most groups also pay therapist invoices once a month).
• Note taking and record keeping:  You capture and store all your session notes and record them right in the session flow. No more papers and file cabinets.
• Customizable digital therapy materials:  In a live session, you can review your client’s practice data and progress, select lesson objectives and then immediately customize his/her new lesson with a few clicks. Then the relevant materials appear on the screen to walk your client through a complete structured literacy lesson personalized to the client’s needs.
• Streamlined client communication: You easily manage client communications right on the Lexercise platform. Use templates for common client questions and support, communicate in the same place as all your client notes and performance data, and capture all client communication history in the same place as your session notes.
• Online customizable parent and child activities: With a few clicks at the end of your weekly client session, the Lexercise platform allows you to quickly customize and deliver the practice your client needs to master what you taught him/her that week. Both parent and child are given daily practice activities that relate to the objectives you just taught. The client’s performance on these activities is logged and reported to you.
• No copyright violations: As a registered therapist with Lexercise you have our permission to use our copyrighted materials in web conferences. If you are using other publishers’ printed, copyrighted material in video conferences, you are violating their copyrights and are at risk of prosecution.

You just have to have high-speed internet, and you can be located wherever you would like. We have a number of therapists who have lived in or traveled to interesting places like the Caribbean, Mexico, Europe and even Australia all while delivering Lexercise teletherapy. If you like the tropics, probably the best place to live would be Hawaii because during your normal business hours you would be able to serve clients in the coveted after-school hours for all U.S. timezones.

It depends on a number of variables, including how many clients you see and if they have been scheduled through Lexercise or through you. Working full-time, a number of Lexercise teletherapists make over $80,000 a year.

If you work for a therapist group, your group administrator will likely provide you with clients. Also, Lexercise sends paying clients to our therapists when we have them. And most therapists get a portion of their customers from their professional & personal networks through word-of-mouth marketing.

If you have your own therapy group, then you will have the opportunity to get some of your clients using the Lexercise consultative sales tool. This tool is integrated into the Lexercise communication system. It allows you to contact potential new clients who have screened their children with our tests and/or completed symptoms checklists and the results have shown a risk for a literacy problem and the likely need of your help. This tool takes much of the work out of contacting and following up with potential new clients because it includes templates, scripts, scheduling and much more. 

You will also do marketing for your online practice to build up your group’s caseload.  Lexercise supports our therapy groups in marketing their online practices. You will be able to use our sales tools and marketing support to easily communicate with your own leads as well.

With about an hour of marketing and consultative sales work each day, our therapist groups are filling up their caseloads.