About The Morris Center
At The Morris Center, we are dedicated to transforming lives through our unique and comprehensive approach to treating and preventing learning difficulties based on the science of learning and brain development. Our mission is to help individuals unlock their true potential, empowering them with more tools to ensure they achieve success both in the classroom and in life. Uniquely, The Morris Center and Dr. Conway co-authored a study on 1,500 students, showing we can preventing reading deficits for over 97.6% of 5-year olds, even when they enter Kindergarten with high risk for struggling to learn to read and later being diagnosed with Dyslexia or a Specific Learning Disorder with Impairment in Reading (SLD in Reading) (Torgesen et al, Journal of Educational Psychology, 1999).
To date, no new randomized controlled trials research study has had more success than those 5-year olds who received literacy empowerment with the NOW! Foundations for Speech, Language, Reading and Spelling(R) program. The Morris Center is your one-stop team of brain scientists who know how to how to efficiently, effectively, and with a range of price options, unlock your child’s, teenager’s or even an adults’ full potential in language, learning, memory, visual processing, visual motor skills, literacy, math, comprehension, mood, anxiety, behavior, regulation, modulation, attention/focus, executive functions and academic and occupational skills. You are part of our team when we work together to empower the learners’ full potential to their true IQ level, not the low bar of only grade level.
We Understand The Challenge And We Can Help
Science-Backed Methods
Our treatments are backed by extensive independent research conducted with NICHD national experts’ critique, highly competitive grant funding and in conjunction with noted universities. From these collaborations, The Morris Center published three randomized controlled trials (RCT) research studies.
One seminal RCT study, in collaboration with Florida State University, University of Florida,The Morris Center and Dr. Conway (trainer of the instructional staff), is hailed as one of the most empowering dyslexia interventions to date, as after the empowering training the students’ “…reading accuracy and comprehension were in the average range…” after being in the bottom 10th %ile before starting the study’s training program. Remarkably, “Within 1 year following the intervention, 40% of the children were found to be no longer in need of special education services.” (Torgesen et al., Journal of Learning Difficulties, 2001)
Sadly, the national average for Special Ed / IEP services helping students improve their reading skills enough to exit Special Ed classes and resume or join for the first time regular education instruction is only 5%. This means 95% of students never make enough progress in Special education / IEP services to leave those programs. Why would parents want their children in a system with a 95% failure rate?
Comprehensive Assessment
We believe in finding and empowering the root cause of learning difficulties. Our thorough assessment of language, memory, attention/focus, mood/behavior, motor and executive functions provides an analysis of how an individual successfully learns in some skills. Also, by identifying both their strengths and weaknesses, then we find the most likely reasons why they’re struggling to learn other skills or abilities. Parents commonly report “he can learn X, but he cannot learn Y! It is just so puzzling why he does not struggle in one and then struggles greatly in another.” Our comprehensive assessment helps explain the “Why” an individual is struggling to learn some skills or abilities.
Intensive Empowerment Program (IEP)
Our Program Starts with NOW! Foundations
Transdisciplinary Approach
Our transdisciplinary team includes professionals trained in different fields of the brain sciences, including neuropsychology, occupational therapy, recreational therapy and speech-language pathology. This team helps empower our staff who are trained as educators to have a deeper understanding of what and how to effectively assess and empower skills, abilities, academics and self-esteem and self-confidence. Both TMC’s Comprehensive Assessment and Intensive Empowerment Program (IEP) are provided by these professionals who are highly trained to work together to help individuals with a wide range of challenges and unlock learning potential to its highest level.
Deep Expertise
The Morris Center clinics are led by Dr. Tim Conway who has performed extensive research in the areas of dyslexia, learning difficulties, specific learning disorders, and other causes for individuals struggling to learn at their full potential. He is also a published researcher in fMRI/neuroimaging and neurorehabilitation (eg phonological alexia and agraphia, aphasia and more), which is far more complicated to empower that typical neurodiversity based Specific Learning Disorders or Neurodevelopmental Disorders or even undiagnosed struggles with learning to read, spell, write, do math or succeed in academic pursuits.
Dr. Conway holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology with a deep concentration in life span Neuropsychology. The Morris Center clinics have been successfully empowering individuals of all ages for over 38 years. It is rare to find a clinic that has kept up with the research and new improvements so well, that it is now empowering the children of its past clients who attended a The Morris Center clinic 20 or 30 years ago as a child, teenager or young adult. Many of The Morris Center clinics’ clients are happy to share their stories of successful empowerment and explain their years of accomplishments thereafter, some of which include graduating top of their class, earning double bachelors degrees, RN degrees with honors, Masters & PhD degrees, graduating from the Wharton School of Businees, and becoming successful members of their communities.
Background onThe Morris Center
The Morris Center was founded in 1986 by Developmental / Behavioral Pediatrician Dr. Ann Alexander and is owned and operated by Dr. Tim Conway. Our research and clinical data repeatedly support the success of TMC’s Intensive Empowerment Program (IEP) delivered by a highly trained transdisciplinary team. Our #1 outcomes are large and long term gains in individuals’ skills and abilities, with minimal follow-up required. Our clients #1 feedback about their experiences at The Morris Center is that the outcomes are “Life Changing!”
The Morris Center is an all-inclusive professional team that can expertly assess and fully empower individuals of all ages. Assessment results do not tell you what to do, but The Morris Center’s team conducts assessments to guide expert development of an individualized Intensive Empowerment Plan (IEP) for each person. We are here, with our 38+ years of expertise, to help you make sense of past diagnoses or undiagnosed learning struggles. Most importantly, TMC’s teams can empower individuals who have difficulties in any of the following areas:
- Reading
- Spelling
- Comprehension
- Writing
- Speech
- Language
- Math
- Sensory Processing
- Motor Skills
- Visual Skills
- Visual-motor skills
- Attention/Focus
- Behavior
- Social Skills
- Executive Functions
- Regulation / Modulation and much more
The Morris Center uses a transdisciplinary team of caring professionals, individually tailored assessments and a proprietary Intensive Empowerment Program that is based on developmental brain science and scientifically proven treatments. The Morris Center’s Intensive Empowerment Program (IEP) is designed to be the last “IEP” a school-aged individual should ever need – large and long-term improvements in foundational skills and abilities that were causing academic or professional difficulties. As weak skills become stronger at The Morris Center, then learning becomes more efficient, is less effortful, helps the learner become more competent and ultimately it is “competence that builds confidence!” Improved self-esteem, new goals, new accomplishments and a better chance to pursue their own future is consequently a common outcome from attending 2-6 months of The Morris Center’s Intensive Empowerment Program (IEP).
A Team Built to Achieve Results
The Morris Center boasts a dedicated and diverse team of professionals, each bringing specialized expertise and a compassionate approach to support individuals with unique learning needs. United in their commitment to empowering every learner, they utilize research-backed methodologies to develop and improve foundational (and more advanced) skills, ensuring each student is understood, valued, and positioned for lifelong success.
Why The Morris Center is Different
The Morris Center’s unique and powerful features include the following:
1. All staff providing treatment are licensed or supervised professionals in their specialty fields (Speech-Language Pathology, Occupational Therapy, Child/Adolescent Psychiatry, Education, Neuropsychology, Nursing, Nurse Practitioning).
Most educational/tutor centers are unable to employ licensed professionals with expertise in their fields of study; Successfully improving reading, spelling, language, sensory/motor, visual, writing and comprehension abilities are VERY complex skills that are not easily improved by a layperson or even an educator.
2. The Morris Center is one of the only clinics in the USA that has completed and published results from three 5-year government funded research studies.
- The successful prevention of dyslexia in children
- Powerful remediation of dyslexia in elementary school students.
- Significant improvement in BOTH accuracy and
reading fluency in children with dyslexia.
40% of these students were staffed out of ESE/SpeciaI Ed services after treatment at The Morris Center; nationally, only 5% of students with an IEP/Special Education services ever leave their special classes and graduate to return to regular education classes.
Most tutoring/educational centers have no research evidence that their methods actually work. The few centers that do have some research cannot show improvements similar to those achieved by The Morris Center.
3. The Morris Center students achieve, on average, one full grade (or more) of reading level and phonological processing improvement per month of treatment.
This equates to an improvement of 22-28 standard score points in only a few months of treatment. The Morris Center’s methods target the likely cause of the learning difficulties and do NOT teach compensatory skills for working around weaker skills/abilities. Many educational/tutoring clinics report average gains of only 5-7 standard score points, less than a one fourth of the gains typically achieved at The Morris Center.
4. We have published research on our successful neuro-rehabilitation of stroke-induced reading impairments in adults, including imaging evidence of brain rewiring achieved after treatment at The Morris Center.
Most tutoring/educational centers have never attempted to help such severely impaired individuals and have not published such treatment results in professional, peer-reviewed journals. The Morris Center employs staff with experience in treatment across all demographics of the population.
5. Our transdisciplinary team of professionals have created a shared neurodevelopmental model of the essential attention, sensory and motor skills/processing/perception, language, social and achievement abilities.
It is the combination of the expertise of the team, the shared model, highly individualized treatment plans that are based on assessment results, and the caliber of the research-based treatment programs that help clients of The Morris Center to produce remarkable and long-lasting gains. Most educational/tutoring centers do not have licensed professionals and cannot offer integrated treatment services.
6. Only The Morris Center offers the research-based NOW! Programs®
The Morris Center has created and perfected the NOW! Programs and we are able to seamlessly adapt the program to the needs of each client.
7. The majority of The Morris Center's clients learn about us from word-of-mouth referrals.
Many of our past clients or parents of past clients are more than happy to speak directly with prospective clients of The Morris Center to share their personal experience and long-term outcomes of the positive treatment effects from The Morris Center’s professional team.
8. The Morris Center understands and treats the complexity of learning challenges.
Recent research indicates that 50-70% of children with language-based learning difficulties will also have ADHD and/or sensory motor/sensory processing difficulties. Co-treating learning difficulties, attention difficulties and sensory motor/sensory processing difficulties can be accomplished through an integrated treatment program at The Morris Center. Educational/tutoring centers do not have licensed professionals and cannot provide co-treatment of these other difficulties. ADHD and sensory motor/ sensory processing difficulties can interfere with treatment success, unless they are also successfully treated with research-based methods.
9. The Morris Center custom designs a treatment program to match the specific needs of a child or adult and only provides the treatments and services that are agreed to by the adult client or the child client's parents.
The Morris Center can operate as an a la carte provider of services. Most tutoring/educational centers have either a “one size fits all” or a limited range of corporate treatment programs that have not been evaluated by peer-reviewed research professionals or published in professional research journals.
10. The Morris Center gets rave reviews from clients and treats a national and international clientele.
Recent English-speaking clients have come to The Morris Center not just from Florida, but across the United States, but also internationally, including Mexico, Venezuelat Trinidad and Tobago. The Morris Center welcomes the diversity.