Janell Warkentin Learning Solutions Welcomes You!

Throughout the entirety of her youth Janell had no definition for the challenges she faced and no formal attempt to help her overcome them was ever made in the schools she attended. What she did know was that at home she felt supported and was given the freedom to pursue whatever goals she had the will to work towards. But school was another matter entirely.

In elementary school she would sit in the classroom looking at the board and trying to listen to what the teacher was saying but nothing made sense. She would look around the classroom and perceive that the other students were understanding the concept that was being taught but no matter how hard she tried, she could not grasp it. She was so confused!

Janell could not hear words being spoken correctly nor see letters and words as they were written. She would try to read and the words would jump around on the page. Spelling was a nightmare, the letters never stayed in the right spot in her mind or on paper. And, because she could not hear the words correctly her ability to verbally communicate with others was also affected. Her words came out sounding wrong, adding to the state of confusion and isolation she was already experiencing.

No one understood her and making herself understood was equally challenging. Friendships with peers were difficult to say the least. Yet Janell persevered through the entirety of the education system, graduating highschool with her class in 1989 She still had no idea what was causing her communication and reading/writing challenges.

Nonetheless, Janell continued to follow her dreams like she had at home, and after graduating highschool she decided to travel the world. One of her adventures led her to live and work in Russia for several years teaching English at a local school.

Her roommate during this time happened to be a young woman from Australia with a background in special education. Her name was Joy. As they were working together studying Russian, Joy was watching Janell. One day she asked Janell to read a sentence, read it again, and then a third time: each repetition differed slightly from the last. Joy looked at Janell and said, “I think you are dyslexic”

For the first time in her life Janell had been given a name to help define her confusion and challenges. She was 24 years old. This was the beginning of her story of becoming a corrected dyslexic.

About 6 years went by after she learned that she was dyslexic, six years of questions with few answers. Research at the time suggested that dyslexia could be caused by a vision problem, a cognitive delay, or an incompleteness within the mind. It told her she was broken, disabled, or somehow “less than” others and that did not resonate with what she knew to be true of herself. So she kept looking, looking for answers to explain the unique gifting she had as well as the challenges she faced.

During this time of searching Janell applied herself to a skill she loved, and which she had been developing since she was in her teens: training horses. She worked with all sorts of people and creatures, helping the outlaw horses to heal from their physical pain and helping them to connect to their humans, and humans to their horses.

One day, one of her clients, Gretchen, told her about a book called “The Gift of Dyslexia” by Ronald Davis, and suggested she read it. HAHA very funny! Janell said. But Gretchen insisted and in the end she read it. That book changed the direction of her life.

After years of searching for answers, here was something that made sense. This book accurately explained how she saw and interacted with the world. It explained how her giftings and her challenges came from the same place and how those challenges could be corrected without compromising the gifts. This is what she had been looking for. There was no question, Janell knew she had to try this for herself.

So in the spring of 2002, she signed up for a Davis reading program. In just 5 days Janell’s world of confusion caused by dyslexia was completely transformed. As she worked with her facilitator, building concepts in clay, reading, writing and language became clear. Words and letters no longer jumped around on the page, she could hear the spoken word correctly and with that obstacle removed her speech became clear as well. Janell worked hard, soaking up every minute of her program, yet the incredible changes she experienced surrounding language came naturally, effortlessly as if they had always been there, because, in a way, they had. Janell was never broken, she just needed to learn language differently.

After her program Janell went back to the work she loved, training horses and riders, but she was not the same. The communication challenges she had experienced from a lifetime of dyslexia were gone. She could read, write, and communicate in ways she had never dreamed. In time, even as her horse business grew more and more successful, Janell began to realize it was time for a change. It was time to share the gift she had been given with others.

It took about a year to wrap up her horse training business, but then, in 2009 Janell went back to school. She went to the Davis Institute to learn how to help others in the way she had been helped through her Davis program. After a fast track year of intense study Janell became a licensed facilitator trained in guiding others in reading, writing, math and attention mastery programs. She gained clients quickly as success story after success story rolled in. But Janell wanted to do more.

She went back to the Davis Institute in 2012: this time to learn how to facilitate programs for the autistic. She got her license for this and never looked back. Janells’ work as a facilitator has been so successful that starting in 2024 the Davis Institute has asked her to help train more facilitators, making her a trainer of trainers. Now, through this work, Janell has helped hundreds of beautiful visual spatial persons to be able to overcome their challenges and let their giftings truly shine.