Our Philosophy
The Community School is one of the only schools in the country that has explicitly embraced Stanley Greenspan’s DIR model as the foundation of its approach. We believe that healthy social-emotional development is the key to success in the social realm, the academic realm, and in the so-called “real world.” It’s important to realize that the DIR model is a broad framework for understanding how development occurs, how emotions relate to learning, and how one can best interact with a child to foster growth in social-emotional and cognitive areas. In addition to using the principles of the DIR model to guide us, we also use a variety of broad teaching approaches and specific strategies to address the individual needs of each student.
The Community School uses Stanley Greenspan’s DIR Model as its starting framework. DIR stands for Developmental, Individual-Difference, Relationship-Based intervention and education. What this means is that we are trying to strengthen each student’s ability to be in sustained, shared states of attention; to interact in reciprocal, emotionally flexible ways; and to be self-reflective emotionally, able to see the world from the perspective of others. In order to do this, we must develop warm, nurturing, and interactively challenging relationships with each student, and these relationships must be built on each student’s individual profile. That means understanding how each student processes the world (i.e., sensory and emotional reactivity, information intake and interpretation), and finding ways to connect with each student through that profile.
Too much jargon? Then think of it this way. Learning of any kind requires that we focus and attend for extended periods of time. It also requires that we interact with ideas, material, and other people. By strengthening the social-emotional development of students, we are making it easier for them to engage with the world around them in learning-oriented ways. Some of the results of this process should be more abstract, symbolic thinking, an understanding of inference and metaphor, the ability to engage in deductive reasoning, negotiation and the ability to compare and contrast. The primary result, however, should be a more engaged, emotionally expressive, interested and interesting kid.
We will offer the students a rich and challenging curriculum, but we will do it in the context of what is meaningful to each of them, and we will use the content of the curriculum primarily as a means to develop their ability to engage and interact with others in sustained, flexible, abstract ways. A key starting point is found in the ability of each student to self-regulate—that is, to calm themselves (or be calmed), to repair logical and emotional breakdowns, and to remain organized and communicative under stress of varying kinds. This ability to self-regulate is under-developed in most of the kids we work with, but in every case that we have seen, it can be improved.
When people are excited and motivated about something, they communicate better and learn more easily. Dr. Mel Levine of the educational research organization All Kinds of Minds suggests that when both teachers and students understand how a student learns, and when teachers build on the interests, or “affinities,” of those students, success comes more easily and is more meaningful. Our approach begins with the passions of individual students; when students interact around these passions, they are more engaged, excited, and communicative—in other words, more motivated to relate to others and to learn.
Howard Gardner’s work on multiple intelligences suggests that every individual has relative strengths in one or more domains, and that these strengths are often overlooked or devalued by a traditional educational approach. School can be difficult for students whose strengths are not in the area of auditory/verbal performance, leading to challenging behavior and low self-esteem. At the same time, these students may operate more comfortably and successfully in the physical, the artistic or musical, or even the interpersonal domains. A student might struggle to follow spoken directions, for example, but excel at building complex structures or understanding intricate visual-spatial problems. Our approach recognizes the particular profile of each student and attempts to develop the strengths in a student’s preferred domains. In addition, by “strengthening the strengths,” a student will experience more success and be in a better position to address his or her more challenging areas.
We offer a variety of mentoring opportunities to students. The process of helping a younger or more needy child is an excellent way to help students to develop a range of abilities, including empathy, leadership, and teamwork. Mentoring also helps students to strengthen their abilities to communicate ideas in ways that others understand. By working with younger children, students are able to develop these abilities without the added performance pressure of peer competition, and without feeling the need to compare their performance to that of others. Giving students responsibility and control over their environments—in measured, monitored doses—can be an excellent way to strengthen those students’ abilities. The younger students respond to older students reading with them, working with them, playing games with them, leading them on outdoor activities, and just generally hanging out. At the same time, the older students benefit by stretching their communication and relationship skills.
Much of the curriculum will focus on social-emotional issues. First, many learning activities encourage or require involvement with others. The student with an affinity for computers might be assigned to teach other students how to use a particular computer program. Students might be assigned in teams to complete specific projects, such as building a table, planning and cooking a meal, or developing a presentation on a topic of interest. Most learning activities encourage students to draw on the strengths and knowledge of people around them. Teachers spend time coaching students on how to work together; in addition to developing projects that involve teamwork and cooperation, they provide feedback about the relationships that students develop in these contexts.
Second, part of the curriculum focuses specifically on the concepts of feelings, relationships and communication. What does it mean to be a friend? How do people relate to each other around shared interests, and how do they stay engaged around topics that may be less compelling? What does it mean to be a leader, or to be part of a team? The students are challenged to understand and reflect on their own emotions and to broaden their range of emotional flexibility. This in turn helps them to broaden their ability to analyze problems from multiple perspectives and to become effective communicators by learning how to analyze an audience and tailor messages to those audiences. We emphasize the development of trust, of friendships, and of emotionally rich interaction. We believe that the stronger an individual’s ability to sustain him or herself in relationships, the better learner he or she will be over the long run.
Many students with learning differences and challenges in relating and communicating struggle to organize their experiences of the world in the face of uneven sensory reactivity, sensory defensiveness, and frequent under- and over-arousal. Traditional education programs have long missed this essential piece of the learning puzzle. Our approach provides a sensory diet tailored to each student to enable him or her to engage more easily with the surrounding environment. This sensory diet may come in the form of specific exercises and activities throughout the day, but will also be implemented through various curriculum elements from outdoor learning to building, hiking, and biking. Learning activities take advantage of and strengthen each student’s individual learning style (e.g., visual, kinesthetic, auditory); this means that, whenever possible, we modify the curriculum to suit the student’s profile.
We encourage you to read this short article by Stanley Greenspan and Richard Lodish to further explore the connections between development and academic learning.
One of the reasons why The Community School has such a favorable teacher-student ratio is to address the individual needs of each student. Although students need to be able to function in small groups for most of their day in order to be successful, it is true that most students learn best when the material and the teaching approach match their individual profile. Consequently, we use a variety of recognized and innovative strategies to help our students learn in meaningful, connected ways. Some of these strategies and curricula include (but are not limited to):
- Lindamood-Bell’s Visualizing and Verbalizing (V/V). V/V provides a framework and activities for strengthening a student’s ability to generate internal visual images, a critical component of reading comprehension, multi-perspective thinking, and emotional flexibility.
- Mel Levine’s “All Kinds of Minds” Framework and Social Cognitive Curriculum. Mel Levine is a pioneer in developing ways of understanding the specific learning differences students face. Much of Levine’s work focuses on educating the student about his own learning profile, better enabling him to make adaptations to his own approaches to learning. In addition, Levine’s social cognitive curriculum (including a book entitled Jarvis Clutch, Social Spy) provides a methodical way to help students learn to negotiate the complexities of the adolescent social world.
- Michelle Garcia-Winner’s Social Thinking Curriculum . Perspective-taking, the ability of one person to consider the point of view and motives of another, is a crucial skill for successful interpersonal relations and is one that anyone with a social cognition disability will struggle with. This curriculum addresses the different ways this problem can present itself and how to approach the problem. It includes exercises and activities designed to be immediately applied to the student, and explores how to help students think socially across their home and school day.
- Power Write. A simple but powerful way of helping students learn to construct complete paragraphs and analytical essays.
- Georgia Quality Core Curriculum (QCC) Resources. The Georgia Department of Education provides tremendous resources online, from lesson plans to entire sequenced curricula in a variety of content areas. We make frequent use of the QCC for content, but also as a guide for understanding what students “should” be learning at each grade level.
- Portfolio-based Assessment. Students accumulate work throughout the year, revisiting and editing certain assignments and building new assignments off of others. Rather than create an over-focus on grading individual assignments, we help students look at their entire body of work, seeing what they do in a larger, more meaningful context.
- Project-Based Learning. Students work on several projects during the year that integrate many of their learning goals. These projects may include an analysis and writing component, an art component, math, social studies, and/or science components, a social-cognitive/interaction component (e.g., interviews, community exploration), or a range of other elements.
- Sensory-Based Activities to Foster Sensory Integration. Maneuvering obstacle courses, punching karate bags, and making playdoh: these activities all incorporate specific sensory elements designed to help students use their senses in more organized, integrated ways. We use a range of resources in this area, from occupational therapy activities to modified PE games.
- Technology-Assisted Learning. In addition to a range of educational software (from typing tutors to interactive games), we also use portable Alphasmart keyboards to facilitate students’ writing, tape recorders for dictation, and other technology-related strategies.
We also use a wide variety of specific academic materials tailored to each student’s needs and interests, including material from the EPS Series, Saxon Math, Everyday Math, Vocabulary from Greek/Classical Roots, and many more.
Homework is something of a controversial issue, and many people are conflicted about it. Is it necessary? Is it useful? If a student doesn’t do homework, does it mean he isn’t working as hard as other students? Most of us grew up with the assumption that homework is an important part of school. In fact, the research of the recent past about the benefits of homework is inconclusive, and much of it suggests that for children with learning challenges, the costs may outweigh the benefits.
In general, we will not assign a lot of home-based academic work for your student, and we will do so only when the material is compelling and the student shows an interest in working on it independently. As a student becomes more invested in his own learning and more capable of doing thoughtful work independently, we will add homework to his overall plan.
There are two activities we encourage parents and students to do every day:
Every day each parent should spend 30 minutes or more interacting with their child around his interests. This might mean engaging in pretend play, talking about Yugioh cards, or playing Frisbee in the yard. This “floor-time” activity should be chosen collaboratively with the child; this is not a time for parents to dictate the activity. We will offer guidance in how to interact with your child in this way. A good place to start is some of the reading materials (especially those by Stanley Greenspan) listed elsewhere in this handbook.
Each student should read for 30 minutes every day. Ideally, this reading will sometimes be independent and sometimes be done together with a parent. For independent reading, anything is fair game, from comic books to favored children’s books to science fiction to non-fiction. Reading the same book multiple times is also acceptable. It is not important for a child to be reading at his highest level of proficiency during these times; in fact, research shows that reading below one’s level of proficiency strengthens fluidity, speed and comprehension.
When reading together, select a book that parent and student will both enjoy. Parents may choose to read aloud, or alternate paragraphs with their child. Enjoying the time together and reading with speed and smooth flow is more important than reading complex, challenging material. Reading aloud is a wonderful way to do something with several children at once; often children can listen to and enjoy read-aloud stories that are more complex than they can read comfortably on their own.
We ask that parents treat both floor-time and reading as assigned, daily homework.
We do recommend several books that may help you to better appreciate our approach. Please contact us at dave@thecommunityschool.net if you would like guidance on reading more about our approach.
Building Healthy Minds, Stanley Greenspan
How early development relates to learning, and what needs to happen in order for children to develop. This is a fairly broad and philosophical book, but with incredible richness and many thought-provoking ideas.
Engaging Autism, Stanley Greenspan and Serena Wieder
How to intervene with children who have trouble relating and communicating. The best source for understanding how to interact with your kid of any age.
The Challenging Child, Stanley Greenspan
Playground Politics, Stanley Greenspan
Focused on school-aged children. Not as deep as the others, but also not as dense.
The Out-of-Sync Child, Carol Stock Kranowitz
Provides a basic understanding of sensory integration, and what happens to kids when their bodies don’t interpret sensory information correctly.
A Mind At A Time, Mel Levine
The Myth of Laziness, Mel Levine
All about how to understand the specific learning differences kids can struggle with. Highly relevant to our approach.
The Schools Our Children Deserve, Alfie Kohn
A Different Kind of Teacher, John Taylor Gatto
These two texts are more reactionary than the others and less directly relevant to what we’re doing at school, but both make compelling cases for some specific changes to how education is handled in this country.