Reading and Math Remediation at Classical Schools
Now that school closures due to illness are in the rearview mirror, many teachers and administrators are working to close their students' learning gaps. Unfortunately, many smaller schools lack the staffing (and hours in the day) to work with students individually. While it may be frustrating for all parties involved, there is a solution.
Here at Higdon Learning Solutions, we love working with schools and it often doesn’t cost the school anything! The relationship ends up being very streamlined where we're not only serving the students, but also providing teachers with an individualized professional development that will serve all their students for years to come.
We often get asked, "how does this work?" so I thought I'd take this opportunity to explain our process of working with schools.
We have a meeting with those at the school.
Teachers and school administrators can schedule a meeting with me (Brittany) though our website. I'll ask several questions about your students' needs, where holes lie in professional development and what your goals are for the students in question. I'm also available to answer any questions you have about curriculum, literacy and math interventions, etc.
The school recommends us to the parents but the parents make the initial contact.
If those at the school feel like we would be a good fit, they reach out to the student’s parents. Because parents are their child's primary educator, they must make the initial contact with us. We will meet them, discuss their child's needs and, with the parents' permission, include their child's teacher in on further correspondence.
We assess the student to see where specific learning gaps lie.
At the start of each intervention program, we assess each student. For literacy, we're looking at several aspects of reading development, from comprehension to fluency, to phonological awareness and writing. For math, the assessment is administered by the parent and we will share our observations once we receive it back .
We work with the student one-on-one twice a week.
After the assessment is completed, we create an individualized program for each student and work through that program one-on-one twice per week. Often this takes place at home, but we also are happy to work with students during school hours as long as a school administrator or teacher permits it and is able to provide a laptop or tablet and distraction-free environment for us to meet with the student. While each program is different, we do reinforce and celebrate the classical curriculum. Often our sessions include poetry memorization, building critical thinking and validating a student’s sense of curiosity. We exclusively use material that is true, good and beautiful.
With the parents' permission, we provide the school with detailed session notes weekly.
We take parents' roles very seriously and want to ensure that they are completely "looped in" on everything we are doing with their child. For this reason, we provide them with detailed notes with screenshots of their child's work as well as recommendations for reinforcing our interventions at home.
We meet with teachers and parents on a regular basis to suggest learning accommodations and possible modifications to their assignments.
After teachers and parents have the opportunity to review the session notes, we hold Friday "office hours" where parents and teachers can meet with us. Most parents and teachers also have our cell numbers and we're usually very happy to answer questions in real time.
