Indian Creek School has grown from a student population of 33 in 1973 to approximately 470 in its lower and middle schools today. In 2006 this private, nonsectarian, coeducational day school in Crownsville, MD, added an upper school for 320 students.
“With nearly 90 percent of our staff trained in All Kinds of Minds programs,” notes Indian Creek Learning Specialist (and All Kinds of Minds national faculty member) Mary Mannix, “we can discern each student’s strengths and affinities. We use All Kinds of Minds resources to provide accommodations and interventions that help overcome learning weaknesses. This results in optimism, independence, and a greater sense of self-worth in our students.”
School faculty use the techniques and strategies provided in All Kinds of Minds’ Management Resources Binder, as well as other tools from AKOM’s Educator Resources on the Web (i.e., Learning about Learning sessions, as well as lesson plans dealing with individual neurodevelopmental constructs), to help them weave All Kind of Minds philosophies and principles into the fabric of their teaching practice.
All Kinds of Minds also has given the Indian Creek community a common vocabulary to facilitate communication and understanding within and across all three school divisions. The Attuning a Student process allows for development of specific learner profiles as Indian Creek students advance from grade to grade.
Indian Creek School Co-founder and Head of School Anne Chambers recalls, “We held our first All Kinds of Minds course in 2001 because we were looking for a better way to address and implement our philosophy of valuing each learner and eager to involve ourselves with a program encouraging the practice of defining observable behaviors rather than labeling students.” All Kinds of Minds’ program emphasis on collaboration by parents, students, and educators to better understand and nurture each student’s learning profile of strengths and weaknesses has given Indian Creek School the processes and tools to achieve its goal of helping students become independent learners with the self-confidence to take intellectual risks in a warm, academically challenging environment.
