Awakening a Desire to Learn
To be successful in a secondary school, each Greenwood student must close the gap between ability and achievement. Enriched remedial and academic classes encourage students to begin this journey. However, we have found that improving academic performance is only one prerequisite to success. The desire to learn, the motivation to put in extra study time, and a positive outlook are indispensable components for continued progress during academic years.
Beyond these skills and desires, it is necessary for students to persevere in applying learned remedial skills to the vocabularies and concepts of advanced academic subjects. Through its emphasis on individual strengths, The Greenwood School fosters these important attributes in its students.
Many children with learning difficulties, such as dyslexia, have lost their enthusiasm for classroom work and feel hopelessly awkward and embarrassed in a mainstream peer group. They often reject compliments and encouragement from friends and family members because they think they are being consoled or patronized. Greenwood's program has evolved over the course of more than two decades of teaching experience and research. We have seen the progress that is possible when these children are removed from the emotional pressures of an "age-grouped" classroom and placed in a true peer environment. This is a setting where uneven academic performance is the norm. In this environment, it is possible to recover lost self-esteem. Every class during the academic day is grouped according to individual need. The content of each class is modeled after an enriched pre-preparatory curriculum. Students who felt deficient in the mainstream classroom have an opportunity to discover how normal they truly are in a peer group that demonstrates wide-ranging interests, talents and abilities. Understanding teachers, intellectually challenging classes, team sports, recreation, successful experiences, and a beautiful campus environment combine to reawaken the desire to learn.
During the course of their years at Greenwood, students are taught skills to help them succeed in school. Sixty percent of Greenwood graduates attend mainstream private and public high schools where they succeed in meeting academic requirements for matriculation. The remaining forty percent continue their secondary studies in specialized remedial schools.
Recent Greenwood graduates have enrolled at Blue Ridge School, Cushing Academy, Holderness School, Brewster Academy, Forman School, Gow School, Pine Ridge School, Kents Hill School, Vermont Academy, Landmark School, Eagle Hill School, St. Johnsbury Academy, Kildonan School, The Dunn School and West Nottingham Academy.
Gaining Confidence
A child who has a learning problem should not identify with failure, but at the same time he should not use his difficulty as an excuse to avoid taking advantage of opportunities. Many students we interview have experienced the academic and social complications of being separated from peers in order to attend special remedial classes. Normal play hours have often been cut to make up schoolwork or to meet with a tutor.
A child who has a learning problem should not identify with failure; neither should he use his difficulty as an excuse to avoid taking advantage of opportunities. We believe that unless a student develops confidence and a firm sense of self, his academic training will not be fully effective. Greenwood teachers help students to develop new perspectives and to strive for achievable social and academic goals. Progress is recognized both inside and outside of the classroom.
We encourage kindness, fellowship, and tolerance. Our value – oriented community environment is the reward of a cooperative effort on the part of students, parents, faculty, and administration. We have seen how a child’s confidence may be nurtured in a society that upholds the possibility for each of its members to contribute to the richness of the whole.
