Support For Students With ADHD Is Passion Of Vienna Business Owner
VIENNA, VA — Vienna’s own Colton Turner didn’t know he had attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) during high school and college despite difficulties with the workload. It wasn’t until he took the GRE standardized test for graduate school admission that Turner learned he could use extra help with academics.
Today, Turner is helping K-12 and college students with ADHD and others who need extra academic support through StudyHouse Education, an academic tutoring and skills support center in Vienna. He told Patch many of the students at StudyHouse have ADHD.
“I do connect with kids with the similar brains we have,” he said.
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Turner grew up in Vienna, attending Westbriar Elementary, Kilmer Middle School and Marshall High School, and his dad was involved in the community as a Little League and Babe Ruth League coach. After high school, Turner pursued a degree in psychology from VCU and worked in the field.
In 2009, he moved back to Northern Virginia to pursue a master’s degree and worked in educational roles, including at MLS Educational Consultants, a tutoring service in McLean. There, he gained experience working with students with ADHD and later became a program director.
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Even after a health scare with kidney disease, getting married and having a child, Turner was ready to go out on his own. In 2019, he began tutoring in his Vienna neighborhood, homes and schools. That same school year, the COVID-19 pandemic put students into virtual learning.
“COVID in an actually weird way became a catalyst for growth for my business because the demand for tutoring for kids who would not really benefit from an online model really hit the roof,” said Turner.
In 2020, he ended up converting his Vienna garage into a classroom space to help more students and brought on more staff. In the next school year when students returned to in-person learning, he continued using his home classroom for after-school programs.
The home classroom had space constraints that limited the number of students served. In the previous school year, Turner began looking for a brick-and-mortar space. In March 2023, the location at 301A Maple Ave W Unit G in Vienna opened.
Turner, who has worked with students who have IEP and 504 plans, wants families to know StudyHouse is a place that can help students on the autism spectrum and with ADHD and other learning challenges. The business offers a combination of academic tutoring and executive skill coaching to help with things like time management and organization.
Turner says the students at StudyHouse are bright and got good grades in lower grades. But when they got to higher grades, their learning abilities were more challenged.
“What I’ve found in my experience is most struggles in school not content related,” said Turner. “It’s more an inability to manage their work, plan when they have a lot of work and prioritize.”
With the skill coaching, StudyHouse helps students manage their workload, covering everything from assignments in their Schoology accounts to contents in their backpacks. That involves instructors writing out daily plans for students to follow.
Another offering is an adapted classroom, which is a microschool for students out of traditional classrooms for various reasons. Programs are customized to each student based on their academic, behavioral, and socioemotional levels, goals, their curriculum and homework load, level of independence, and future academic placement.
Aside from developing skills, StudyHouse offers traditional tutoring for students who want more instruction in specific subjects or test prep for the SAT or ACT.
While organization and other skills are more complex for older students, StudyHouse focuses on more basic skills like reading and math for younger learners. The staff have experience working with students who experience dyslexia and other reading disabilities.
“With elementary school students, it’s a lot of skill building. I love teaching students how to be better readers and writers,” said Turner.
As of now, StudyHouse serves about 60 families in the Vienna and Fairfax area. Turner enjoys being a business owner in Vienna due to the town’s character and connectedness.
“It’s just nice being part of this close-knit community,” said Turner. “I’ve driven down Maple Avenue thousands of times, and now I’m proud to have a business on Maple Avenue.”
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