My son has ADHD, dyslexia, and dysgraphia. He's in 9th grade now. He's one of the most amazing people I know — funny, perceptive, sharp in ways that don't show up on standardized tests.
We first noticed something during COVID, when he was in 4th grade and suddenly home all the time. He couldn't read multisyllabic words. He was guessing. He had memorized every sight word in the world — he'd been effectively masking the issue for years. But watching him look at a computer keyboard like it was an alien object started to clue us in.
We got him tested independently since the school wasn't offering evaluations during the pandemic. ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia. Once the diagnoses came through, he was placed in school programs. IEP. PPT meetings. Accommodations. My wife was the primary point of contact — I attended meetings, stayed involved, but honestly? I thought we were in good shape. We were headed in the right direction.
The system is full of people who care
I want to be clear about this: the people at our school care. They're not the problem. But I was always frustrated by the opacity of the system around them. I could never decipher the drivers behind what was being done for my son. Was it a rush to see him as "improved"? Was it to check boxes that accommodations had been provided? Were we actually understanding what was working and what wasn't?
The documentation was confusing. The processes were confusing. I signed things. I nodded at meetings. And I never quite felt like I understood the machinery well enough to know whether it was truly serving my kid or just serving itself.
Then high school happened
The world changed in one day. Yesterday he was heavily supported in middle school. Today he's in high school and "expectations are higher."
What a bunch of bullshit.
My son's brain didn't change over the summer. His dyslexia didn't mature. His ADHD didn't graduate. But the support system that had been holding things together suddenly expected him to need it less. That was the moment I realized I needed to stop trusting the process and start understanding it.
The questions that built Teacherr
I'm a software guy. Once I started digging, I couldn't stop. But the questions I was asking weren't technical. They were the same questions every parent asks:
How do I understand this system? Not just the acronyms and the forms — the actual logic behind what's being done and why.
How do I work WITH the people at the school? They care. I know that. But I need to show up as a partner, not a bystander.
How do I set up home so it actually works? The right environment, the right methods, the right approach for his specific brain — not generic advice from a book that wasn't written about my kid.
How do I help my son believe in himself? Because above everything else, he's an amazing person. And he needs to know that the way his brain works isn't a problem to fix — it's something to understand and build on.
I was lucky. My close friend runs special education for a district. His wife is a highly regarded guidance counselor. I had access to experts most parents never meet. Over a lot of long nights and a lot of long conversations, I started mapping the connections — diagnoses to methodologies, accommodations to real-world effectiveness, evidence-based strategies to the specific moments that matter at home.
And I realized: this shouldn't require luck. This shouldn't require knowing the right people. Every parent with an IEP should have access to this.
That's when Teacherr was born.
What it does
You upload your child's IEP. The system maps their diagnoses to evidence-based methodologies, rates every accommodation for real-world effectiveness, and gives you back something you can actually use: your child described as a learner, an honest assessment of what's working, and specific scripts and strategies for the moments that matter most at home.
The knowledge behind Teacherr isn't generated from thin air. It's a proprietary system built with special education practitioners — mapping diagnoses to methodologies to the specific things you can do and say as a parent. Every recommendation traces back to published research and expert validation.
Try it
Teacherr is in beta right now. We're looking for 50 founding families to try it for free and help shape what this becomes. Upload your child's IEP at app.teacherr.ai — it takes 30 seconds, and the PDF never leaves your browser.
Or if you'd rather not upload anything, just email your IEP to mike@teacherr.ai and I'll run it for you personally within 48 hours.
— Mike
Parent first. Builder second. Still figuring it out.