A theme that has emerged in my work with teachers, administrators, and various institutions is that integrating Schools Attuned comprehensively at various levels can be challenging. As the SA program is designed specifically to include tools for integration at the student, classroom, and school levels, many participants leave their core course feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of immediate integration… Let … Read More
AKOM at Purnell School
We are pleased to be the July bloggers for AKOM. We have actively implemented the Schools Attuned program since 2004; all of our students get demystified during their first year at Purnell, all teachers are trained, and AKOM strategies and terminology are utilized in and outside of class. As a small girls boarding school, we at Purnell have the unique … Read More
Student Assistance Team
Our school utilized the Schools Attuned management binder resource to help us in coming up with strategies for students who were sent to the Student Assistance Team. As our school switches over to more research based interventions that must be documented and graphed to show growth or not, we are using the interventions in the binder as Tier I strategies … Read More
Schools Attuned Fair
During our last week of school the third graders put on the Schools Attuned Fair for the upcoming second graders. Although this is usually supposed to be presented to parents, we decided to try something new. We learned about the constructs throughout the year and then spent the last three weeks reveiwing and learning the specific lessons for the fair. … Read More
Understanding and Accepting
Last week I completed the exam accommodation schedule for our students at Forman School. It was enlightening to see that students who were once resistant to taking an exam in the library for a distraction free environment or in the computer lab where they would have access to a word processor to compose essays were now readily signing up for … Read More
What’s next?
As our school year closes and the seniors graduate I ask the question “What’s next for them”. Having been taught to advocate for themselves, and with the majority of them being demystified, I ask if the college world will understand that students with learning disorders still require support. Fortunately the majority of the senior class members have chosen colleges and … Read More
Teacher Buy In
I’ve been talking to folks outside of the Forman community about how we get teachers to buy in to Schools Attuned. I find this a fascinating topic. So often, those who are closest to the point of impact for students who learning differently serve as advocates who champion the cause. Some classroom teachers respond by explaining that they are not … Read More
“The Language”
Since our intensive training in the Schools Attuned Program, Subject Specialist Path, which earned faculty a certificate two summers ago, all Learning Specialists at Forman School now use the neurodevelopmental terms in the Learning Profile write-ups which they compose for each of their students before classes begin. This one page Learning Profile provides a “snapshot” of the student that includes … Read More
AKOM Private v Public
My role at Forman School, a private school for bright college bound learning disabled students centers on bringing two different playing fields together. A percentage of our students are funded by their local school districts. I have to deal with the districts, attorneys, advocates and parents. One issue that surfaced with regard to public schools deals with classification. I was … Read More
Sharing AKOM’s Research Base
I recently shared AKOM’s Research Base of the Schools Attuned Porgram, www.allkindsofminds.org/Research/Index.aspx, with colleagues. Several teachers asked for this information following our school wide Schools Attuned work. While we work exclusively with college bound students who have learning differences, prior to learning the neurodevelopmental constructs, our teachers possessed many varied understandings of the learning differences. These different interpretations were the … Read More
