Hello Educators, Parents, Child and Education Advocates, and Oregon Community Members,

Welcome to our learning center’s site! My name is Julie and I am one of the founders of Imagination Learning Center. I have benefited a ton from the programs developed by my mom, Pam Davis, the owner of the learning center. Below is a letter for you all to read what we’re all about and what this learning center means to me. Please feel free to contact us to learn more. Our programs here help kids with general and special needs, many within the Autism Spectrum, ADHD/ADD, PTSD, Cerebral Hypotonia, and more. Our program is also perfect for kids who learn kinesthetically (through action, activity, and movement).

One of my greatest dreams in life is to positively inspire, change, and expand on how well education is done in Portland, OR and around the world. So, it is with a great deal of joy that I can share with you all, the step my family and I are taking in that direction. We are opening a learning center!!!

My goal is to open charter schools and schools for the arts that use unorthodox and alternative methods for learning that include all learning styles and a multi-sensory approach –using physically active games, music, movement, imaginative themes, etc… to make learning fun and engaging. Not only that, but to create an environment that is healing and safe for people who’ve been traumatized, have disabilities, or have issues that impair their learning process. Luckily enough, this has also been my mother’s dream and she’s been creating programs and working as an inventive and innovative teacher for 30 years. Watching her work successfully with kids who supposedly “had no hope to succeed” over my lifetime, has been inspiring to say the least.

This particularly means a lot to me because I am one of those kids who wasn’t supposed to make it. I was privileged to have a mother with a Master’s degree in teaching but, more importantly, I had a mother who was willing to do whatever it took to get me the help I needed. She had the drive to be my advocate when other schools, teachers, and doctors gave up on me or just wrote me off as broken and messed up for good. My mom took more classes and did tons of research to figure out how to help me re-learn how to read and learn after I had a brain injury as a kid. My story is included in the history section of our website, here: Our History (I’m the one who had the spiderman-like experience). Which is what I’d like to introduce to you all today.

I will as briefly as possible say that this learning center is proof that a family can heal, combine their dreams, and work together to give back and support the community around them. I don’t mean to brag a bunch about them but at the same time I am really proud of how my family has worked through so much and really found a way to work together and to give something to the Portland community that Portland really needs. Our arts and music education funds are being cut left and right and our educational system is in need of great repair. We are prepared and excited to be leaders in this community and to be part of the change in education for Portland.

I am proud to be a Davis and I am grateful to my mother, more than she’ll ever know, for her strength, determination, brilliance, heart, and compassion. She was my inspiration for painting strong women for my MFA thesis in NY and, without her, I may never have had the where-with-all to dream big and imagine greater possibilities than watching Barbra Streisand and Bette Midler movies and eating Totino’s pizza all day. She showed me that being different was a gift and that you can turn pain and great loss into strength and heart. She is one of the greatest people I’ve ever met and I am incredibly lucky she is my mom.

Thank you all for your time reading this. I want you to know what I’ve been working on since returning back to Portland and to include you all in it as this takes off. Please let everybody know about our new business. My family is taking a big risk to make it happen and has put their savings into it and we are committed to making this business work and to help kids all around the city. We will be starting a non-profit, as soon as we can afford it, so that we can be a resource for kids and families that do not have the $ to pay. My goal is to offer arts and alternative education to ANY student who asks. Our first location is in Bethany Village in NW Portland and we hope it won’t be long before we’re in N Portland, Downtown, SW(Multnomah Village), SE, and NW(nob hill)…Pretty much everywhere 😉

Thank you to my favorite German, Sandra, for all her genius design with our website and to Steve Sharp for his help with our site as well. We look forward to building more relationships with other Portland businesses and I will see you all around town for sure!

Ladies and Gents, I give you Imagination Learning Center!!!! Find us on Twitter, Facebook, and the greater interwebs!!!

Love,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Julie Davis