ABOUT
Kit Savage
As Managing Director of Savage Advocates LLC, my practice serves parents of children with disabilities in their educational journey from Pre-K-College.
Savage Advocacy offers comprehensive educational advisement and strategic planning. Each step of the educational process is meticulously planned with immediate, short term and long term goals for your child’s education demands attention to detail. My practice is dedicated to ensuring that children with disabilities civil rights receive a free and appropriate education (FAPE).
Savage Learning, a division of Savage Advocates serves students with ADHD, Anxiety, Learning Disabilities and related conditions that manifest in the school environment as deficits in executive functioning performance.
My approach to EF tutoring is 1:1, motivational coaching of students to improve stamina and academic performance by building emotional awareness to begin to learn coping skills for stress so they can perform the planning, studying, organizing and writing tasks they need to be successful in their school.
Savage Learning offers Executive Functioning Tutoring/Coaching, Yoga and Mindfulness Meditation Modalities
Kit Savage Yoga is Yoga and Somatic Healing Writing Classes for women to cultivate stress reduction practices as we raise neurodiverse children. We must prepare and support wellness as fiercely as we advocate for our children. Along my path, I have found these modalities reduce PTSD, reinforce calm emotional IQ, strengthen the body and uncover creativity. These services are essential for healthy living for all parents.
I am a writer, Certified Yoga Teacher and Mindfulness Meditation teacher, educational advisor and advocacy consultant. I distill the issues down to create a plan to achieve the goals of each family, as they jump hurdle after hurdle to ensure their child receives an equitable education.
I am a parent who has stood up publicly for more than a decade for our community. Tackling the politics of funding special education head on, speaking truth to power on the failures to intervene and pressures parents face in the educational system. It is fulfilling to offer services that improve and shorten the road for parents on their journey to raising their children. All children deserve the right to read and learn at the same level as their non disabled peers.
I advise and empower parents of children with disabilities to navigate through the complex “System” of Special Education.
It is a long term process filled with imperfections but also one where children can and do thrive. But only when parents relentlessly follow up on the efficacy of the services and supports outlined by their child’s IEP or 504 plan.
MY EXPERIENCE
IN SPECIAL EDUCATION
Over the last 14 years, I’ve been walking the walk as the parent of two children with disabilities and I zealously advocate on their behalf every day. I became an educated advocate by choosing to inform myself and have attended countless educational conferences, special education advocacy trainings and seminars. And I still don’t go it alone, I work with an experienced, amazing advocate too.
While I am well versed in all major disabilities and disorders, I have cultivated an expertise in understanding how to develop programs using best practices and interventions for language based learning disabilities such as Dyslexia, ADHD and Executive Functioning and related disorders.
In 2012-2015, I founded the first independent parent support network, Speducated Parents to support the parent community by understanding our children’s educational civil rights. As a result of developing a safe community, parents identified there were systemic problems in special education. I led and organized parents in a relentless PR/media campaign to shine a spotlight on the special education problems within Darien, CT public schools.
The dynamic, energized Darien parent community demanded special education be investigated for suspected violations against their children’s civil rights to FAPE (a Free and Appropriate Education). As a result of two independent investigations, the conclusion was more than 30+ civil rights violations against students with disabilities were exposed. In the end, the parents were vindicated and the Darien School District was compelled to make changes in special education policies and procedures.
I participate frequently in professional development in civil rights educational law, best practices in Special Education, Differentiated Instruction, Executive Functioning, Dyslexia and Mindfulness. Currently, I am pursuing Certification in Learning Differences (LD) and Neurodiversity with Specialization in Executive Function from Landmark College.
PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND
Prior to raising children, for fifteen years I worked in the field of television marketing, advertising and media. For more than a decade, I worked for MTV Networks, where we marketed what were then “new” networks and built them into international brand icons at Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite and TV Land Marketing. I went on to work in Tween Advertising as VP, Strategic Planner of Youth Branding at Saatchi & Saatchi, for blue chip clients including P&G, Kodak and General Mills.
Memberships:
COPAA (Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates)
SEEK (Special Education Equity for Kids) of CT (Board Member)
Council of Exceptional Children