Ben Shifrin, Head of The Jemicy School, in Owings Mills, MD, has been inducted into the International Dyslexia Association’s Hall of Fame. Frankly, I had no idea there was such a Hall of Fame. For me, this is another chance to bring recognition to what I’ve always thought of as a great school for kids who have learning disabilities, particularly dyslexia. I’ve not been to the newer High School but have spent time at the Lower and Middle School. Jemicy School does educate the whole child, in terms of developing strengths as well as remediate weaknesses, and as a result, kids just seem to feel good while they’re getting the help they need.

Girls getting healthy in Utah Residential Treatment Center (Kolob Canyon)

I’ve been on the road a lot the past several months visiting all sorts and sizes of therapeutic boarding schools, residential treatment centers and therapeutic wilderness programs. Primarily, I’ve focused on ones that (by reputation) have some informed sensitivity to the impact of learning disabilities and developmental differences on therapeutic effectiveness issues.

Concurrent to my long-time involvement in the field of learning disabilities, for the past 18 years I’ve also worked in and/or consulted with behavioral and therapeutic schools and programs. I’m happy to report, as I conclude a week-long tour of several Utah programs, there is finally some real growth in understanding the impact of learning disabilities on mental health.

As promised earlier, I’ll begin posting more and specific information and observations on types of programs useful for parents and kids with learning disabilities who also need psychological, behavioral and social support in a school or intervention program.

If your child with a learning disability is spinning out of control emotionally and behaviorally and you start looking for a therapeutic school or program, how do you go about that?

First, if you can, get a current psycho-educational or neuropsychological evaluation. This will help measure and describe the interplay between the current behavioral distress and his or her learning profile of strengths and weaknesses.

Should you use an educational consultant or should you rely on information found on the internet?

You need to use both, your own due diligence and that of an excellent educational consultant.

If you rely on only one type of data and input source, you sell yourself and your child short.

Choosing the right placement is daunting, emotionally charged and carries both high risk and tremendous opportunity. That’s why having someone who is more objective, knows programs and Learning Disabilities can be so helpful.

Finding a placement that understands how the LD helped to create the distress in the first place is vital. More than that, finding places that know how to avoid pitfalls in therapy that result from processing issues (of both the therapist and the student) is also vital.

It’s not that therapists need to be LD experts. However a therapist having a working background of LD can be a hugely important ingredient for success. If the therapist is otherwise talented in creating a therapeutic alliance with your teenager and adept at creating the same alliance with the placement consultant who is a strong and nuanced advocate for your teen’s learning style, then you really have a team.

There’s a growing openness and awareness among some in the therapeutic community on this impact of LD. Recently I was speaking with Dr. J Huffine of Second Nature Wilderness Program, Cascades. In a recent conversation I had with “J,” his description of his team creating a type of written menu of problem-solving options for one of his teens with Autism Spectrum Disorder was so heartening to hear. He’s the type of therapist in the wilderness setting that I’m talking about, knowledgeable in his own right (about LD) and also open and humble in creating alliances with LD professionals such as me. Second Nature as a company shows lots of promise and history of being such an organization as a whole.

More on Dr. J Huffine and SNWP and in more detail in a subsequent post.

I was sitting around a campfire, in the high desert country of southern Utah, miles from creature comforts, listening to a group of teenage boys telling their stories to me and another visiting educational consultant. They were introducing themselves and sharing the reasons why their parents sent them there. “There” was a pretty austere location in red rock country. No distractions, lots of opportunities to examine one’s life and plenty of opportunities for staff to fine tune diagnostic issues (concerning behavior).

In my introduction to them, I shared that I work with lots of kids and families who have learning differences and learning disabilities. I explained that I was visiting schools and wilderness programs that might work well with clinical/behavioral issues and issues related to learning disabilities.

Afterwards one boy asked if he could speak to me alone. With tears in his eyes he asked me if “there were schools” that he could go to “for my aftercare” that can help me with my therapy “but also deal with my dyslexia.” He also teared up when he explained how painful it was to hear that his “writing assignment” given to him by the field staff out there, was “not good enough.” He was talking to me about how much of a different and more severe struggle it was to put his thoughts down on paper than most of the other boys in the group.

This was a bit of a breakthrough moment for this boy. After letting him know that I’d be in touch with his ed consultant (I happen to know him) to communicate his thoughts and wishes, I also debriefed with his therapist.

This particular therapist and in my opinion, this particular outfit, had the perfect response. He was thrilled and moved by how this kid self-advocated, and how he opened up. Even better, the therapist was completely stoked/inspired to talk about ideas and tools that might help this kid even more. This continued a better dialogue with a group of therapists about how to connect those dots between learning struggles, how one processes and expresses information, and therapeutic tools.

1. How hurt, shame, anger. depression and self-abuse can become a part of the lives of children and adults with learning disabilities,

2. As a result of #1, schooling to address the remediation of the learning difficulties will need a more therapeutic/clinical focus than solely an academic one.

3. Now that there are many, many more therapeutic schools and wilderness programs that advertise and market themselves as being suited for kids with various learning disabilities, I wanted to get involved in a discussion about schools and programs that actually deliver on those claims.

4. I acknowledge that this is a controversial and important subject because lives are at stake.  When a college list is created for a student with a learning disability, there’s a significant need to get that right, but when looking at matching needs to programs with therapeutic/clinical environments, when students have begun to struggle and mess with self harm, depression, drugs, and the like, the need to get it as right as possible becomes much more critical.

Don’t you think?

A  reminder:  I’m not  saying that learning disabilities cause emotional and mental health issues.  In fact some of the most creative successful and healthy people and kids I know have learning disabilities.

It’s just that the risk factors are there and can’t be ignored.

Last week I visited some wilderness therapy programs and specialized schools that combine clinical expertise with an informed and sensitive understanding of learning disabilities.  I had some eye opening experiences.

Imagine this: You’re six years old, and for the next 10 years or so, a sizable portion of your mental and emotional fuel tank will be used up avoiding humiliation, developing feelings of not being good enough, falling behind in assignments, getting teased, being misunderstood, and struggling way more in basic skills like reading and writing, than some kids who don’t seem to work as hard or care as much. You begin to dislike or hate reading and want to avoid the whole issue of school and homework altogether.

What are the chances you’d be at risk for some pretty significant emotional turmoil, upset or more? Six hours a day in a school setting that only marginally addresses your needs is a LONG TIME.

I’m not saying that having learning disabilities causes mental health struggles. But struggling with basic skills can marginalize you in school, and combined with other factors, significantly increases the chances of developing them.

According to the NICHD/Hazelton Foundation, 60% of adolescents in treatment facilities for substance abuse are learning disabled.

From the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, “Research indicates at least twice as many young adults in the criminal justice system show signs of dyslexia as those in the general population.”

Want more? From the Journal of Affective Disorders: “Presence of learning disabilities among clinically depressed, hospitalized children was 7 times higher than in the general population.”

My own experience in working in residential treatment centers and emotional growth/therapeutic boarding schools bears this out.

We have many schools and tutorial centers across the country, who provide excellent services for these kids, but too often, way too often, they are not enough. They are not enough to stem the tide that began early in elementary school. The waves of misdirected instruction, of poorly formed or late understandings and diagnoses come crashing down, and the rubble looks like anger, shame, self-doubt and mistrust, along with a really unhealthy dose of feeling like a victim in life.

Is it really a stretch to connect the dots from some of these kids and adults with such childhood beginnings, to self-medication and self-destructive thoughts and behaviors?

It turns out that there are hundreds of schools that have sprung up in the US and abroad, which are designed to address the emotional development of teens and to a lesser extent, younger kids. These schools, some with a more medical or clinical approach, some with less, have been around for a while now. It’s only recently that they’ve begun to wake up to the specific needs of kids with specific learning disabilities.

In addition, there are scores of “therapeutic wilderness programs” that are relatively short-term and high impact, that strive to, and purport to, having a knowledge base and sensitivity to kids with LD.

My own perception is that a few handful of these programs and schools are superior and that the gap between who they say the serve, what they say they deliver and what they actually deliver, is pretty small. Others are only talking that talk.

Recovery and lives are at stake. Due diligence is in order.

Next month I’m going to go out and visit a handful.

Clicking on each of the categories below will produce a list of schools that offer those services. However, not all schools in the K-12 Schools list at this web site have been categorized. We hope to categorize more schools as this project continues, possibly adding more categories to this list as the need arises.

Most schools fall into multiple categories and you’ll see a list of each of their categories of service at the bottom of each school’s post.

Schools with Services for Language-based Learning Disabilities (LLD)
Dyslexia, Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD) or Language Processing Disorder

Schools with Services for Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
Inattentive, hyperactive, or mixed types of ADD

Schools with Services for Non-Verbal Learning Disabilities (NVLD)
Difficulties with executive functions, organizational skills, spatial difficulties, with or without some degree of social difficulties

Schools with Services for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
Asperger’s Syndrome, High Functioning Autism or Classic Autism

Trident Academy is located in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina and is just outside of Charleston. Not too bad a spot, right near the bay. Trident is a day school for kids with learning disabilities in grades K-12.

Trident was started in 1972 and enrolls up to 160 students. During my visit, there were approximately 140 students. The primary types of learning disabilities their students have fall under the umbrella term of Language-Based Learning Disabilities, and so will include Dyslexia and Central Auditory Processing Disorder. These are students who may also have some executive function difficulties; in other words may be otherwise bright but encounter problems with planning, prioritizing, task analysis and problem-solving particularly with regards to reading and writing tasks.

Similar to other schools that enroll younger kids, the students who enroll in the kindergarten and first grade may not have a static or defined diagnosis of a specific learning disability. Consequently many of these young kids are diagnosed with sensory motor integration problems.

Orton Gillingham is the foundation of the remedial aspect of this school. It is apparently one of only ten schools accredited by the O-G Institute. At the time of this writing there are three Orton Gillingham Fellows, advanced practitioners and trainers. Whenever I hear that term, an O-G Fellow, I get that “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” song stuck in my head. I know the Orton folks are much more serious than that, and the school takes pride in having these advanced trainers. In any event, in addition to the Fellows, all new teachers are required to take a three-five week summer training in this approach.

All Lower and Middle Elementary grade students have one period per day of what’s called LEAD, or Language Enrichment and Development. This addresses the deficits in reading and written expression and is for forty-five minutes. Other classes have an average of seven students per (with teacher and aide), but the LEAD classes are usually 2:1. In evidence of some level of individualization, one kid I encountered was getting two periods of this remedial class per day. He was an eighth grader who was reading more than a few grades below grade level.

There were about fifty kids who were enrolled in the high school and most continue to take a LEAD class but some opt for a SAT prep class instead. They have three levels of Spanish offered (reportedly only one year of foreign language is required for South Carolina). Kids can also take Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Marine Biology for their lab sciences. They have a full time music teacher and there’s art instruction for all. I’m not certain how often or specialized those strands can be.

Overall the school had a well-organized and personable feel to it, and the same can be said of the campus itself.

Related at this site: Trident Academy

The Centreville School is a school for kids with language-based learning disabilities and has been around since it’s founding in 1974. It’s located in Centreville, Delaware, which is very close to the border with Pennsylvania. It works with kids from age four through 14 and is focused on the enhancement of literacy skills and adds content area classes in science, social sciences, physical education and the arts.

It’s a relatively small school, with approximately 140 students. It has a small intimate feeling and the classrooms seemed well equipped and with well-paced instruction. As the emphasis is on working with kids with reading and writing difficulties, they subscribe to all the elements outlined in the work of the National Reading Panel: phonemic awareness and phonics, fluency and text comprehension.

Within the classroom, language-processing support is given through Lindamood-Bell programs such as Visualizing and Verbalizing, Seeing Stars, and Phoneme Sequencing. The classes range in size in the early grades at six or seven students to the upper grades with a maximum number is twelve. Sometimes classroom groups will break down to even smaller numbers for the language processing instruction. With three speech-language specialists, consultation with classroom teachers occurs frequently.

The math instruction is well laid out into what they call Math Meeting, Fact Practice, The Lesson, and Guided Class Practice. Guided by the best practices of instruction for students with learning differences, these four components give math a type of spiraling approach that is constantly reviewing, giving time to learn new facts and processes, and providing time each day to practice learned material. In addition, the focus of the “meeting” part concentrates on applied math and language of math through practicing calendar, time, money, place value, graphing and visual thinking as well as mental computation practice.

Centreville also utilizes occupational therapy specialists to evaluate each incoming child for sensory processing weaknesses and motor coordination needs. They will provide OT programming where needed and also use the OT inspired handwriting program “Handwriting Without Tears.”

Related at this site: The Centreville School

The Wardlaw School is another school for kids with language-based learning disabilities in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s actually part of the overall organization called The Atlanta Speech School. However, since it is distinct in its profile than the other parts of Atlanta Speech, I’m making a separate entry.

The Wardlaw School operates as a day school for elementary aged children with mild to moderate language based learning disabilities. The school describes the student profile as testing in the Bright Average Range of an IQ assessment. They operate as a transition school enrolling kids for a few years and returning them to other more mainstreamed settings. Given the shorter length of stay, they try not to enroll kids whose learning disabilities are considered in the severe range. In addition kids with attention or behavioral issues that are significant enough to interfere with the group model and structure would not do well on a long-term basis. Obviously those types of judgements can be hard to tease apart solely through reading an assessment, so a thorough admission’s visit is in order. Structurally, they organize into nineteen classes among the lower division (K-2) and Upper School (3-6) with classes typically having nine students.

Wardlaw is set up with a significant speech language orientation. Their leadership structure in fact, is equally shared between two heads of school. One is education and learning disabilities specialist and the other is a speech and language pathologist. Oral communication, language/vocabulary comprehension, and pragmatic conversation skills is given a place right alongside of decoding fluency and spelling instruction.

Impressively all teachers at this school hold masters level degrees in either learning disabilities, speech and language pathology or reading. There are five full time speech and language specialists and they are used extensively. To me the school demonstrated a high level of collaboration between the two disciplines. There were classes where both a teacher and SLP were present and the roles overlapped in a good way. In one primary classroom I was in, the kids were giving oral reports and were assisted by the speech teacher in following the strategies for good presentation. There were lots of visual cues in all the classrooms to help remind students of important processes/sequences. The different reading and language development programs are all research based and generally followed an Orton Gillingham perspective. The school leans more towards remedial activities than content area curriculum or special activities as they call them, because of the transitional nature of the student enrollment. For example, science and social studies are seen as opportunities to practice and apply the literacy and overall learning strategies learned.

In one fourth grade room, I watched a grammar lesson (not my favorite subject). After witnessing one of the more intense and sophisticated sentence diagramming I’ve seen about objects and transitive verbs (complete with impressive recitations by students about parts of speech) I asked some kids to tell me in their own words about what they just did. I also asked them to tell me the purpose or value of what they had done. I must say they gave really good answers to each.

Interestingly I couldn’t help notice that unlike a fair amount of schools for kids with learning disabilities, this school appeared to have an almost equal number of girls to boys. The Kindergarten class I saw had a lot of adults in the room and a variety of structured activities for the kids to engage with. The activities were designed around auditory processing skills, handwriting, and learning alphabetic sound/code associations. Children entering their kindergarten are given the CTOPP in order to assess their skills and struggles in phonological processing. They are then grouped in activities based around the needs.

Related at this site: The Wardlaw School (part of The Atlanta Speech School)