New Danbury School Serves Children With Learning Differences

“I was a fourth grader back in the late '60s, and I couldn't read Dick and Jane,”  said Andrew Gray, director and CFO at the Wooster school. Gray is a management team member at Wooster's new Prospect School.  He explains his own background with learning disabilities. “Nobody knew what dyslexia was. My father was fortunate enough to be sent overseas, and I was taught for a year by nuns in Northern Wales. As we were leaving, they said, There is nothing wrong with your boy other than he has dyslexia.”

 Sitting in a deep chair in the lobby of the new school, Gray continued, “We had never heard the word, and when we came back to the states, my mother found a young guy at Harvard who was doing his Ph.D. on dyslexia. His name was Dr. Cole and he founded a school called The Carroll school in Lincoln, MA. I was a member of the founding class of the Carroll school. I went in not reading at all and in two years, I came out reading at a college level, and I never looked back.”

 Helping students cope with learning disabilities and differences has a deep and profound meaning for Gray. “For me to work on a project like this is exciting and personally meaningful. I know exactly what a difference this can make in a student's life, to be able to deliver the right curriculum, in the right way, makes such a difference. “

 The Prospect School is in the former Maimonides Jewish Day School building, a seven minute walk from the main campus of the Wooster School. It has approximately 11 classrooms and according to the school, can easily accommodate 100 children. The target goal, however, is 60.

 “This all came into being because there were kids coming to the Wooster School that we couldn't serve,” said Tad Jacks, Director of Admissions at Wooster, and also a member of the team for The Prospect School. “We knew this region really needed it, and when we did the environmental scan of other schools, they were too far away for students from this area.”

 Jacks agreed that a large number of students who apply for private school education often do so because the children are struggling in public school. “The reality is that most parents know that children's education does not happen in a straight line,” Jacks said. “We have a number of kids coming in from a large school setting, and many times they will do better just by being in a small setting.”

 The program started on September 8 of this year, with barely a handful of students. The cost is $40,000 a year, however, Jacks said, “About 29% of our students are receiving need based financial assistance, and we are committed to that.”

 Kelly Blair Raymond, Ph.D., lower school learning specialist at Wooster, is also on the management team for curriculum and assessment at Prospect School.

Raymond described the goals of the new school and said, “The Prospect School is designed to meet the child where they are, each individual child's needs are met. We help them feel successful and feel good about themselves. There is a lot of hands-on learning, and they also participate in the self-help aspect of the Wooster School. For instance, the kids create the menus and cook the meals themselves. They are simple meals, but they make them themselves, and they work together to clean up together. The science curriculum is very hands on, its very integrated, if there is curriculum in one subject, it carries through. It's very exciting because it's a new school.”

 At this moment, there are only two students in the program, and outside of the classes, the school is developing opportunities for the students to be integrated into other programs to interact with other students at the Wooster School. “We will be integrating them and making sure they have peer friends, and are getting to know their age groups,” Raymond said.

 “There are four of us,” explained Gray. “And we bring a broad range of experience to the task. Tad ran a school for language based disabilities and I was the assistant head of the Rectory School in Pomfret, CT, which has a long and proud history of working with LD kids. Dr. Raymond helps with the curriculum. Rae-Anne Allen, who is a division head at the lower school (Wooster) also has a background in these areas. With starting from scratch, we bring more to the table than anyone of us could bring alone.”

 Gray added, “We are working with kids with language based differences. We would not work with autism. We are trying to work with dyslexia or dysgraphia, decoding issues, ADD, ADHD, language bas ed issues. We felt there is a need here. There is, of course, a need for other services but that is outside the mission.”

 “Over the course of the next five years, we expect to go to 60 kids. As we continue to grow, we will always have the one-on-one support. For some, the ability to work with a speech pathologist is very important, for others, fine motor skills are an issue, to be able to manipulate a pencil. There is a whole range of issues and we will be working with a whole range of outside specialists," Gray said.

 For those who are interested in the program the first step is to contact the Prospect School or Tad Jacks at the Wooster School. “The first thing we would ask for is any testing by their public school, or recommendation. Most kids coming from public school will have an IEP, (Individual Education Plan) and while it's very easy to look at a piece of paper, meeting the child adds the depth.”