Author: Don Adams

You know the TV commercial — the one where the parents are buying back-to-school supplies for their kids at the big box retailer, dancing and singing along with the famed holiday tune.

But back-to-school isn’t close to the most wonderful time of year for the vast majority of parents of students with learning disabilities. Earlier this year, Ontarians learned that students who need an Individualized Education Plan are, literally, in a queue that can last up to three years. We know that students with LDs benefit greatly from a highly personalized classroom setting and that these simply don’t exist in the public system.

Yet we’re also committed to the ideal that students shouldn’t be excluded from alternative, niche schools that perfectly match their set of ABILITIES because they can’t afford to attend.

Our school, The Academy, is a community school in every sense of the word. First, we’re housed in the beautiful Central Y, occupying a sizeable block of real estate from Bay to the west, Yonge to the East, Breadalbane to the north, and Grosvenor to the south. It doesn’t get more central than that – we are surrounded by public transportation and excellent parking lots.

As we are affiliated with the YMCA, we also share their policy of inclusion. We will not turn away a mission-appropriate family for financial reasons. Our pledge to you is that we will find a way to make it work financially for your child to attend The Academy if this is the right school for them.

There’s not much I can say here to top that. Our school provides everything that our students need. For students coming to The Academy from years at a school that simply didn’t fit, it IS the most wonderful time of the year.

It would be my pleasure to show you our school, our community. Please email me at Don.Adams@YMCAGTA.ORG then join me for some excellent coffee and conversation.

Don Adams, Head of School

One of the most satisfying things for a Head of School is to happen across research that validates and justifies what you are already doing.  It was with considerable interest that I read The Learning Partnership’s recent report “Resilience in Children and Youth: Promising Practices from Canada’s Outstanding Principals”. (http://www.thelearningpartnership.ca/page.aspx?pid=913)

For the researchers involved in the study, developing the capacity for resilience in our students – the capacity for children and youth to navigate to the resources they need – is a singularly important function of schools.

According to their research, “When we provide children and youth who are ‘at risk’ with supports that facilitate their growth, the research shows very clearly that eventually all the effort by teachers, educators, guidance counselors and special educators pays a dividend far into the future.” (Dr. Michael Ungar, Ph.D., Co-Director, Resilience Research Centre, Killam Professor of Social Work, School of Social Work, Dalhousie University)

A quick scan of the Criteria for a Resilience Promoting School reads like a description of The YMCA Academy.  The criteria are based on research by the Resilience Research Centre across many different cultures. “Both qualitative and quantitative studies have shown that facilitative environments that promote all seven of these aspects of children’s lives are likely to provide children who are disadvantaged with opportunities to experience resilience.”

Schools that promote resilience provide opportunities for students to experience:

Nurturing Relationships

• There are positive peer interactions in which every child has an opportunity to show others his or her talents.
• There is active participation of parents and other caregivers in children’s learning, with channels for communication open between the child’s home and school.
• Educators have opportunities to build strong relationships with students and provide mentorship to the most vulnerable.

Developing a Positive Identity

• There are activities at which every child can succeed.
• There are opportunities for children to show others their talents.
• There are opportunities for children to feel unique and valued.

Power and Control

• There are opportunities for students to influence their learning.
• Students’ voices are heard in the design of extra-curricular activities.
• Students are rewarded with success when they put in extra effort.

Social Justice

• Students, regardless of ethno-racial background, gender, sexual orientation or ability,
• are treated fairly while at school.
• Curriculum, when possible, reflects the cultural and contextual diversity of students.

Access to Resources

• Students feel safe at their school.
• Extra curricular activities are affordable.
• The school building is accessible.
• Children’s basic needs for food and clothing are met, when possible.

Sense of Belonging

• Children feel welcome at their school no matter what their background.
• Children are given opportunities to contribute to their school and the well-being of others.
•  Children’s families are welcome at the school.

Culture

• Children’s diverse cultures and traditions are celebrated at school.
• Children are able to share at school aspects of their lives that are important to them.
• Children have opportunities to tell stories about their past and the history of their families.

I think parents and guardians of our students will agree that we provide every opportunity to develop resilience in our students based on these descriptors.

If you have a child who is struggling in a traditional high school, you owe it to yourself to visit the Academy to learn more about our program.  More importantly, you owe it to your child.

Don Adams, Head of School

This year, we’re going to run a competition for students with learning style differences and learning disabilities from around the world. We’re going to ask them to design their ideal school.

Why?

First and selfishly, we think that over the past decade or so, we’ve built a superb small urban high school for students with learning style differences and learning disabilities. While we’re not looking for pats on the back, we’re always looking to improve and refine our school. Why not seek advice from our clients?

But, more importantly, we think that for a student who, because of learning issues, has experienced a lot more failure than success in school, this exercise can be therapeutic. By designing the school they wish they could attend, they can help make it possible for others to one day attend a school that looks like theirs.

How?

Well, we’re going to share the ideas, not keep them to ourselves. We’ll tell school design firms what the students in our contest came up with. We’ll circulate the results to school boards and principals and education ministries. We’ll help spread the word that a huge piece of meaningful school reform should come from the students themselves.

Stay tuned. More on this coming in the fall.

Don Adams, Head of School

Imagine being the only person in a room of twenty-five with a condition that everyone feared and no one understood.

Welcome to the daily life of a student with a learning disability. In every classroom in every city, there is a student with a learning disability. That’s a remarkable thing when you actually think about it. According to disability lawyers in Fairhope, disabled students lives in the shadows for a variety of reasons. He may have never been diagnosed, due to the massive backlog in the public system (certainly in places such as here in Toronto where it might take two years of more for a student to even be tested for a learning disability). She is in a classroom with a teacher who has never had training about how to work with students with learning disabilities. Students with LDs are surrounded by other students who don’t share their condition, who haven’t had the experience or education to understand it and who might isolate them for being different.

This is the bleak, daily reality of a student with a learning disability. We’ve seen and heard this reality through stories our own students have conveyed to us when coming to The Academy. It’s amazing how students with learning disabilities open up when they arrive here, usually their first-ever safe haven in the system of schools that has equally been frustrated with them as students, and has frustrated them as learners.

“…Now at The Academy, everyone fits in.

No one is different from everybody.

Everybody gets the same thing.”

Joseph K, Academy student

Now turn this model upside-down and imagine being one of an entire classroom of students with learning disabilities. And imagine having all of the support you need, every day: from highly-trained teachers to counseling support, to an educational program that not only empowers you, but prepares you for success in life where you’ve experienced only failure in school before. That’s exactly what The Academy is.

We help families make informed decisions about their child’s future. We help students become all they and their parents had hoped they could be. Give us a call, come to the school for a visit, and let us show you how our program works for families. Have a look at our school video for a quick overview of how we affect students’ lives – https://www.ymcaacademy.org/?page_id=3126

Don Adams, Head of School