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.

Students with double exceptionalities (those with intellectual gifts and diagnosed learning "disabilities"), with spotty academic records, and with school anxieties benefit from small classes, dedicated teachers, and active mentoring and guidance.

Our ability to offer tutoring, small group work and independent study enables all our students to reach full potential. The Dragon Academy has quite a pool of teaching talent, extending from our regular staff to specialist tutors in a wide variety of subjects. We can arrange one on one tutoring ranging from daily 15 minute after-school organizational sessions through regular homework and project support, to intensive ongoing individualized instruction.

Under the guidance of our principal, Dr. Meg Fox, Dragonfly mentor-tutors are familiar with their students' reports, strengths and weaknesses, and recommended strategies. Mentor-tutors 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 Quickschools, 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.

Dragonfly Tutoring 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 Dragonfly mentors take their charges under their wings, they model, encourage, and cheer. It offers a route for brilliant students to go as far and as fast as they can.

A note on cost: The parents of those enrolled in the program are billed monthly for tutoring hours. 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 trying to tutor their own adolescents. This makes parent-child relations much less taxing.