The Pioneers
In 2020, while the rest of the world was closing its doors, four dyslexia therapists opened one. This is how Lighthouse Academy began.
A Winter's Vision
Ocean Springs, Mississippi
Traci Barrientos, Lauren Houston, Stephanie Hill, and Sorrel Duncan were four dyslexia therapists working together in Ocean Springs, serving bright students who needed structured, multisensory instruction. Just before Christmas break in 2019, they learned the local campus where they taught would close at the end of the school year. The work they had built would move back to a main campus hours away, and their students would be left without a local school that understood them.
They were devastated. They had not planned to start a school. But they had also not planned to watch their students lose the only classroom that had been working for them. Over the next few months, even as COVID shut down the world, the four women began to plan.
They finished out their obligations teaching virtually during the day, then met in the evenings to build something new. In the middle of a pandemic, with no building, no endowment, and no roster, they decided to open the school they had each been imagining. They pooled credentials, savings, and an unreasonable amount of hope, and that fall Lighthouse Academy for Dyslexia opened in person, five days a week, when almost nothing else was open.
We call them the Pioneers because that is what the word actually means: the people who go first, before there is a road. All four of them are still here.
"Children with dyslexia deserve to understand their intrinsic worth and to unlock their full academic potential. That belief is the entire reason Lighthouse exists."Traci Barrientos, Co-Founder and Executive Director
The Founding Four
Traci Barrientos
M.Ed., CALT-QI, LDT, CDS
Co-Founder and Executive Director
Traci had spent three decades teaching reading, built Coast Reading Solutions, and launched some of Mississippi's first school-based dyslexia therapy programs. She brought the founding group her experience and her conviction that therapy hours alone would never be enough. She has since co-founded the Southeastern Dyslexia Summit and READ MS, the state's leading dyslexia advocacy organization, and was named one of Gulf Coast Women's Magazine's 100 Successful Women to Know in both 2023 and 2024.
Lauren Houston
Ed.S., CALT-QI, LDT
Co-Founder and Principal
Lauren is dyslexic herself. She had already left a public school classroom because she knew she was unequipped to reach the dyslexic students in front of her, then earned her Master's in Dyslexia Therapy and a Specialist Degree in Educational Leadership from William Carey University. In the founding group she became the academic anchor, shaping how Lighthouse actually teaches, and she now trains future dyslexia therapists as a CALT-QI.
Stephanie Hill
M.Ed., CALT, LDT
Co-Founder and Lead Dyslexia Therapist
Stephanie taught for seven years at a local private school before finishing her Master's in Dyslexia Therapy at William Carey in 2020, the same year the school opened. She joined the founding group straight out of her program and helped build the therapy model that runs through every Lighthouse classroom, with the stated goal of reaching as many students on the Gulf Coast as possible.
Sorrel Duncan
M.Ed., CALT, LDT
Co-Founder and Director of Finance
Sorrel carried the practical side of the founding, from budgets and enrollment to the countless unglamorous details that keep a brand new school standing through its first year. She completed her Master's in Dyslexia Therapy at William Carey University in 2021, is a Certified Academic Language Therapist and Licensed Dyslexia Therapist, and is a Multisensory Math practitioner through ASDEC. She lives in Ocean Springs with her husband, Kory.
The Spring of 2020
Three photographs from the months before the school existed: a community that showed up, four women planning late into the evening, and a promise put up along the highway.
Lighthouse's first public community awareness event. Every chair was filled. Before there was a building, a roster, or a budget, there was a room full of Gulf Coast families who wanted this school to exist.
Binders, printed drafts, borrowed conference space, and evening after evening of work that turned an idea into a school by that fall.
Put up for awareness before a single student had enrolled. One in five children have dyslexia, and most of the families who drove past it had never been told.
The Path Taken
The Campus Closes
Just before Christmas break, four dyslexia therapists in Ocean Springs received word that the local campus where they taught would close at the end of the school year. The main campus, hours away, would absorb everything. The women who would become the Pioneers were left with students they loved and no local school to send them to.
Teaching by Day, Planning by Night
The four women finished out their obligations virtually, teaching students on screens during the day while the world shut down around them. In the evenings they began planning a new school, not because they were ready, but because their students needed a place to land.
The First Billboard
Lighthouse put up its first billboard along the highway, reading "1 in 5 children have dyslexia." There was no building yet and no enrolled students, only a message the Gulf Coast had rarely heard stated so plainly.
The Pioneers Decide
Rather than wait for the world to reopen, the four of them chose to build the school they had each imagined. They pooled their credentials, their savings, and their families' patience, and started planning a school in the middle of a pandemic, with no building, no funding, and no guarantee anyone would enroll.
Lighthouse Academy Opens
Lighthouse Academy for Dyslexia opened its doors as a 501(c)(3) non-profit special purpose school, in person, five days a week, when most schools were still on screens. The founding families took a chance on four therapists and a promise.
Southeastern Dyslexia Summit
Lighthouse co-founded the Southeastern Dyslexia Summit, now hosted annually at the Beau Rivage Resort and Casino in Biloxi.
READ MS
Lighthouse leadership helped found Resourcing Educators and Advocates of Dyslexia, Mississippi (READ MS), a public policy advocacy organization working to strengthen dyslexia legislation statewide.
National Service
Traci joined the Board of Directors of the Academic Language Therapy Charitable Foundation, extending Lighthouse's voice into the national conversation around dyslexia therapy and teacher training.
CALT-QI
Lighthouse added Qualified Instructor credentials to its faculty, allowing the school to train and certify the next generation of academic language therapists in-house.
An Ecosystem
Lighthouse now operates the Academy, Lighthouse Diagnostics, and after-school Outclient Therapy as one connected ecosystem, serving families across the Gulf South. All four Pioneers are still here.
Southeastern Dyslexia Summit
Each year, Lighthouse Academy co-hosts the Southeastern Dyslexia Summit at the Beau Rivage Resort and Casino in Biloxi, bringing together educators, therapists, advocates, and families from across the region for two days of professional learning and community.
What the Pioneers started
What four therapists began in 2020 is now a school with certified dyslexia therapists, small classrooms, and families who drive across county lines to be here.
The standard the Pioneers set in that first year still governs the school: no child leaves here believing they are incapable of learning to read.
One Lighthouse, three ways we help
Every part of Lighthouse works in concert so families can find the right kind of support at the right moment.
Lighthouse Academy
A three to four year remediation school for students with dyslexia, grades two through six.
Lighthouse Diagnostics
Comprehensive psychoeducational evaluations for children and adults along the Gulf South.
Outclient Therapy
After-school Orton-Gillingham therapy for students who need targeted support beyond the classroom.
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