Why Our Students Thrive
Revealing Brilliance
Our school provides highly effective educational programs for students who have been diagnosed with learning disabilities (LD) in a community guided by Quaker values.
Every day and in every class, our students receive the instruction and support they need to be successful. Educational materials, technology, and classroom furnishings are strategically developed to best facilitate learning for our students who struggle with language-based, sensory, and/or motor issues. The academics are intellectually challenging, the arts are outstanding, and the athletics are spirited, competitive, and fun.
Our approach to educating students with learning disabilities focuses on the learning process itself. The best way to sum up our approach is “Revealing Brilliance.” Building on each student’s strengths, we teach skills needed for learning today and tomorrow.
After Fairview Lake I went to Nature’s Classroom and then in 8th grade to the beaches of Costa Rica to study Spanish. In high school I visited a concentration camp in Germany and the Louvre in Paris. This past March I went to Vietnam and Cambodia. I have seen the world with MMFS and you will too.
– MMFS alumna
Why do our students thrive?
When new families visit our school, they can tell by our students’ levels of engagement and confidence that our community is thriving and our education is effective. We believe this is due to our commitment as a leader in special education.
Our teachers are at the top of their fields and they implement a robust academic program that builds and empowers global citizens. We teach our students how to advocate for themselves and we believe that every voice is important. We provide a school-wide social and emotional curriculum, an outstanding arts curriculum, and an competitive athletics program. Our Quaker values of simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, and service are evident in all aspects of life here. We celebrate our diversity. We are multiracial, people of color, Latinx, white, gender fluid, queer, and straight with many religious affiliations and various family constellations.
All of these reasons and more contribute to the thriving state of our school.
Mary McDowell Friends School: Learning Disabilities Definition
A learning disability is a neurological condition that causes difficulties with the way the brain handles information. Information coming in or going out may become disorganized as it travels among different areas of the brain. These difficulties can interfere with important learning skills such as reading, writing, and/or math. They can also interfere with such things as receptive and expressive language, organization, planning and managing time, reasoning, attention, and long and short term memory.
Children with learning disabilities are as smart as or smarter than their peers, but they usually find it difficult to learn in a typical manner; however, with different learning methods and strategies, they can be just as academically successful as students without learning disabilities.