TIM Tebow, Whoopi Goldberg, Steven Spielberg, Anderson Cooper, Keira Knightley, Cher and Jamie Oliver are celebrities with dyslexia who cope with their learning disability and excel in their respective endeavor.
They are joined by Daniel Radcliffe who has dyspraxia, and Justin Timberlake and Michael Phelps who both have attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD.
Cynthia Tinsay-Gonzalez, owner and school administrator of Reach International School, saw the need for a school that can help children suffering from learning disability to cope with the academic rigors of the big schools and didn’t have a place to go.
“Eventually, parents of children with special needs began to approach us, so we developed our own special education program and incorporate it with what we were already using,” Tinsay-Gonzalez said in a recent interview with reporters.
Described by Tinsay-Gonzales as an inclusive school, Reach accepts all kinds of learners. It has a trained and committed faculty to execute the program. “Reach offers education for Kinder to Level 12. It has programs for regular students and for students with learning disabilities and special needs. We also have a testing center, Reach Educational Assessment Division [READ] that can determine a child’s educational performance level,” Tinsay-Gonzalez said.
She said students with special needs may struggle with the activities of daily living. Some of them experience social challenges and others may have intellectual disabilities.
Students with learning disabilities have weaknesses with certain academic skills in reading, math or writing. Sometimes, they have problems in planning and organization. Short-term memory sometimes is an issue. Students with learning disability, when tested, have average to above-average IQ.
Tinsay-Gonzales said a child with a learning disability has problems processing information to a degree they are unable to learn as quickly as regular children. Thus, it is vital to provide the educational/learning support so the child can learn.
“What kind of support [materials] and the quality of support [faulty] will make a huge difference in enabling that child to learn and succeed,” Tinsay-Gonzalez said.
The most common learning disabilities are dyslexia (reading disorder), dyscalculia (difficulty with numbers), dysgraphia (difficulty with writing), ADHD and attention deficit disorder or ADD.
Tinsay-Gonzales, an education graduate of Assumption College, said persons with ADD have problems with attention span, while those with ADHD has attention deficit and hyperactivity. A student with ADHD struggles with keeping still. There is a desire for the child to be in constant motion.
“If they don’t have the attention span to read and digest information, how will a child learn and retain the volume of knowledge needed to pass? If a child has a problem with comprehension, how will they acquire knowledge? And how will they do problem solving? You need comprehension even for math,” Tinsay-Gonzalez said.
The impact would be seen when the children with learning disabilities get kicked out by Grade 5 or Grade 6. At Reach, these children with special learning needs are admitted to a regular program, but the school provides the needed support so they are able to keep pace and graduate.
Openness is a key to help children overcome their learning disability. She said the condition should be discussed with the children based on their ability to understand. For example, Reach discusses with them there is a problem with the way they process information. The school should find ways for them to work around it.
“Awareness is a step toward sworking around it because you are able to help the child develop compensatory strategies,” she said.
Reach follows an academic program adapted from the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) School of Tomorrow (SOT) Curriculum, an innovative educational system developed in the US and is being used in thousands of schools in over 130 countries worldwide. She said they chose SOT because it is a very highly individualized program.
Like the traditional educational system, the ACE program has 12 levels roughly equivalent to Kindergarten to fourth-year high school. Unlike the traditional system, however, the ACE program is individualized, meaning every student progresses independently at their own level of achievement. These can vary in different subjects.
The SOT curriculum is child-centric. Reach has a general curriculum that encourages participation in the class, but the degree and the depth of the curriculum will depend on the child.
“Chronologically, a student is in Grade 5, but what is their performance level? They can perform in Grade 3 math, but in all other subjects, he is in Grade 5. With the School of Tomorrow system, you can be in Grade 5, but you’re doing Grade 3 math. Or if a student is advanced, maybe he is in Grade 5, but is doing an enhancement program of Grade 7 math. There’s flexibility in the curriculum to address the gaps,” Tinsay-Gonzalez said.
Although the students graduate, they differ in their academic requirements. For example, in math, a regular student is required to finish 12 paces (chapters) a year. However, a child with a learning disability learns similar content with less workload. This is where curriculum modification comes into the picture.
Also, delivery of subject-matter content is different. Content is adjusted so even if they have gaps, they are able to catch up. This approach ensures a child with a learning disability has their self-esteem intact.
In case the child fails to complete the program, Reach makes it a point to check the causes.
“After having looked into the concerns, the school adjusts the educational program. The key is to adjust the educational strategies/behavior so learning can take place. It is important to note that in cases like this, the ability of the teacher to provide strategies to help the student learn is key. In some cases, students enroll in after-school programs to augment learning. Others need to do a summer class to help them catch up,” Tinsay-Gonzalez said. Asked why she named her school Reach, she said it is her way of reaching out to people with learning disabilities, but didn’t know where to go or what to do. It is also their way of reaching out to help.