www.greenville.k12.sc.us/tigervil
Located in South Carolina’s rural mountains, Tigerville Elementary is a public school serving 325 K-5 students. The school is working toward a goal of improving student reading and math achievement, while at the same time providing a school environment physically and emotionally safe for students and parents.
Tigerville Elementary School Principal Regina Urueta reflects, “As a staff, we wanted to better understand individual learning and to help our students understand how they learn so they can self-advocate for their own learning needs. It took only our first professional development experience with All Kinds of Minds to realize its programs could provide us with the knowledge and processes to accomplish that.” Since their first work with All Kinds of Minds in 2008, Tigerville Elementary School educators have been working to incorporate All Kinds of Minds’ pedagogical tools into their teaching practices and classroom curricula; already 92 percent of Tigerville’s faculty members have participated in All Kinds of Minds programs.
At Tigerville, related arts classrooms—as well as academic areas—use All Kinds of Minds’ philosophies to encourage children to have an appreciation of themselves and others as learners. Teamwork and monthly review of the eight neurodevelopmental construct areas as they relate to each child keep staff and students focused on the goal of having everyone understand what he or she needs to do to learn.
By teaching students how they learn and how their brains acquire and process knowledge, Tigerville Elementary School seeks to instill lifelong skills that will serve students not only in educational settings, but throughout life. “The All Kinds of Minds approach of identifying students’ learning profiles is reflective of our mission to provide quality educational experiences tailored to meet individual needs of students,” notes Tigerville Instructional Coach Dr. Ann Shaw, adding, “Our students are now using their affinities and focusing on their strengths to succeed academically beyond the doors of Tigerville Elementary School.”
