The
Schools Attuned Program is designed to help educators recognize and respond to learning differences among their students by modeling and providing practice in several critical processes:
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Demystification—a unique process involving students, parents and teachers that enables student to understand and talk about their learning difficulties and appreciate their strengths;
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Attuning Process—a systematic process using comprehensive observation instruments to create an educational plan that addresses students’ learning strengths, weaknesses and affinities;
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Classroom Accommodations—adaptive strategies that build on a student’s strengths and work around his or her weaknesses to produce better learning results;
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Intervention at the Breakdown Points—teaching methods for educators to learn to find the core of a child’s learning difference; and
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Strengthening of Strengths and Leveraging Affinities—the encouragement of students to exploit, enhance and display their strengths and interests.
The Schools Attuned program teaches parents, educators and children to improve attitudes about learning differently, and focus on learning strengths.”
Some of the Schools Attuned programs’ key principles in it approach to learning includes:
Principle #1
It is inappropriate to rely exclusively on standardized test scores as a sole means of understanding a student’s underachievement.
Principle #2
Teachers who use behavioral supports and strategies improve the learning environment for all students in their classrooms.
Principle #3
When adults misunderstand and mismanage students’ differences in learning, they may render them malignant and create enduring negative consequences.
Principle #4
Labels may often oversimplify complex phenomena, have a negative connotation or erode the self-image of children or their families.