Student Success Program

The Dragon Academy has not only welcomed but greatly benefited from mixing together students with a diversity of learning styles. A school full of gifted non-conformists has flourished with wonderful insights, energies and spots of brilliance. It has been our pleasure to extend understanding, many kinds of accommodations, and collaboration with parents and consultants, in support.

In 2008-09, we introduced the Student Success Programme, a framework to enable all our students to reach full potential, and for the school to offer all that we can. Led by our principal, Dr. Meg Fox, the Student Success team manages the portfolios of the students with exceptionalities, becoming familiar with their reports, strengths and weaknesses, and recommended strategies. Students enrolled in the programme are connected with a mentor-tutor, who can provide support in the regular classroom, working one on one or in small groups to ensure that each student receives help, supervision and organizational support. In their scheduled tutoring session, the teacher mentors oversee homework requirements, making sure, through agenda checks, the "big projects" board, and oversight of the Forum, that students understand what is expected, and that the necessary materials go home and came back each day. They also act as facilitators, keeping classroom teachers informed of special needs, making appropriate accommodations, and providing necessary information, as well as reporting to parents. And to the Principal, of course.

The Student Success Programme is a remarkable innovation, not only in The Dragon's offerings, but as a way of supporting students with exceptionalities. It minimizes the need for withdrawal, "special ed classes", and stigmatizing students, instead maintaining their integration into their classes. It puts tutoring in the hands of teachers who know the child and the school, and can work seamlessly within the actual educational context. The support offered extends far beyond implementation of strategies. The Student Success mentors take their charges under their wings, they model, encourage, and cheer.

A note on cost: The parents of those enrolled in the programme are billed monthly for tutoring hours at the rate of $40 per hour. Parents tell us the extra expense has been more than offset by a decreased dependence on outside tutors, and the delight of seeing a much happier and more productive child. And of course, parents are themselves relieved of the role of tyring to tutor their own adolescents. This makes parent-child relations much less taxing.