Dedicated to educating boys and girls by developing a strong academic foundation, a respect for themselves and others, and a love of learning, Old Trail School is an independent school serving approximately 600 K-8 students in Bath, OH. The School provides a comprehensive curriculum with a commitment to academic excellence, service learning, and global sustainability. In partnership with families, Old Trail School engages and nurtures its diverse community of students as they navigate childhood and early adolescence toward emerging as thoughtful, compassionate and constructive citizens with integrity and confidence.
Old Trail School Headmaster John Farber shares, “We initially embarked upon our journey with the All Kinds of Minds approach in order to provide our teachers with enhanced core knowledge about the learning profile variations that exist across our student body. We believed that our caring and creative faculty would be better able to develop differentiated curriculum and meaningful assessments for their students if equipped with an understanding of the neurodevelopmental framework.”
As the result of the implementing the All Kinds of Minds approach, Old Trail teachers are able to make more targeted referrals when they seek psychoeducational assessment on a student. The school’s team meetings are characterized by concise statements of concerns about given students followed by swift action to collaborative problem solving and solution generation. “We spend less time stating the ’obvious‘ and more time investigating what we can do to help,” says Kath Howard, Old Trail’s School Psychologist.
“The content knowledge provided by the All Kinds of Minds’ Schools Attuned program offers our faculty a conceptual framework from which to integrate their existing knowledge of best practice and from which to add some specific information they may not have been exposed to in their undergraduate—and even graduate—educations,” notes Ms. Howard, adding, “The potency of that—of enriching the knowledge base of experienced educators—has resulted in more resourceful, effective and confident teaching which results in more genuine and durable learning for our students. Their exposure to the All Kinds of Minds approach allows our students and their parents to begin to appreciate differences in learning as a fundamental reflection of life’s rich diversity.”
