LD Resources

Sanford Shapiro looks at The Sterne School
© 2006 Sanford Shapiro

The Sterne School is located in a typically hilly neighborhood in the middle of San Francisco. Across the street from a beautiful city park, you enter the front door after ringing the doorbell. The school has offices and classes on the three levels in this former large city home. Sterne School has 58 students with a building capacity for 60. Focusing on students in grades 6-12, Sterne looks primarily for students with language-based learning disabilities. From my observations, I imagine there are some wider ranges of learning issues, including some more non-verbal learning processing weaknesses that are also addressed at Sterne.

As I spent four years as a director of a school located south of San Francisco, I have known of the Sterne School for a number of years, but this was my first visit. Having operated for thirty years now, this school has a longer history than some others and I was curious as to what their ‘signature’ would appear to be. From my visit I would say that the defining quality Sterne imparts to its students is the development of organizational skills. In support of this educational value, Sterne delivers some explicit teaching of study skills, such as note taking, as well as class management processes. On a weekly basis, each student is given feedback on accuracy and use of their assignment sheets, homework completion and materials management. Parents sign the sheet each week. It’s not immediately apparent how students would grow into increasing levels of self reliance and independence around these organizational practices but personally I appreciated the fact that is was addressed so formally.

Another program embedded in Sterne is the Pathfinders. This aspires to be a transition to post secondary life, work and an understanding of one’s vocation. In a graduated manner high school students spend increasing amounts of time evaluating their interest areas and experimenting with job-like experiences. In 9th grade, students begin meeting once per week in this class. By their senior year there are daily activities including job shadowing.

Sterne operates on a quarterly system and with one week off at the end of the quarters, students get a chance to “start fresh once again,” according to Lisa Graham, head of school for the past six years. With nearly one third of the students being girls, Sterne seems to be on track to mirror the trend of increasing numbers of female students at schools for students with learning disabilities.

Related at this site: Sterne School