“When I told my friends I had dyslexia, they thought it was a disease and ran away from me,” said a little girl.
Children with learning differences often suffer from shame, isolation, and a feeling of “less-than-ness”. It’s frustrating and heart-breaking for parents and children.
Keeping up in mainstream public school classroom is challenging: They are desperate to read, write in cursive and do math like their classmates, but can’t. Public schools try to accommodate the learning differences with Individual Education Plans and intervention programs; yet the students can fall 1-2 grade levels behind their peers.
Charles Armstrong School (CAS) in Belmont, California welcomes children with a variety of learning difficulties: Faculty and staff at CAS strongly believe that children can learn, will learn, and will succeed. Children are taught that they are intelligent, but simply learn differently.
When a child first arrives at CAS, the teacher profile him or her to understand the learning difference, and then determine which tools (laptops, headphones, stability balls etc.) will help manage the learning difference.
In the classroom, instructors use a methodology that helps students fill in the gaps created by the learning differences. The methodology sets a strong foundation for long-term academic success.
Children in all grades are taught within the following framework:
- Academic Concepts and Skills
- Learning Skills and Strategies
- Resiliency
- Gifts and Talents
Choosing to leave the neighborhood public school is a difficult decision for parents: Children are resistant to leave their friends, parents must pay private school tuition and sometimes drive long distances. Despite these costs to attend CAS, the benefits greatly outweigh those costs.
Children learn and blossom at CAS. They are confident, have caught up academically, and have a "toolkit" with which to work. They successfully return to their local schools. When children re-enter to their local schools, they do so with an understanding of their strengths and challenges. They are able to advocate for themselves, and they give the gift of out-of-the-box thinking to their classmates.
Children with learning differences give world the next generation of thinkers, scientists, inventors, doctors, and more.
