Special Education Program

Anchor's Special Education Department

Another year has past, and a new one has just begun. Our Special Education Program is continuing to grow with students, staff and vision. God has truly blessed us at Anchor Academy so we are able to bless His children of all abilities and ages. Our goal and purpose, as a school and as a department, is to do our very best to support the whole development of each child that He brings to us. We are honoured to work with you, and your family, as a team to help develop your child/children academically, spiritually, physically and emotionally.

Here are some of the ways that this department will support our special students and their families in 2010/2011:

1.  Deborah Collins, our department administrator, will gather any pertinent information and make applications to the Ministry of Education, for those children who may be eligible for special grant funding. She also has much experience and training in behavioural intervention and will be available for consultation and program development.

2.  Margaret Scruggs, our reading specialist and teacher, is available to not only identify a reading problem, but also give parents and teachers practical strategies to help solve reading issues. She also has specific and specialized training in facilitating psycho-educational assessments as needed.

3.  Karen Goertz , our special education teacher, has been trained to do the Irlen Screening which tests for the possibility of light sensitivity (scotopic sensitivity) which affects the way a person sees the page when reading. Karen is also trained in the Structure of Intellect Testing (SOI) assessment, which is beneficial for identifying specific learning challenges and giftedness.

4.  PACT is a program that we have learned to help our students develop skills that they may have otherwise missed in their previous schooling. This program emphasizes learning basic skills and encouraging hemispheric brain development. When one side of the brain isn’t developed as well as the other, the imbalance may cause troublesome problems in learning. Some people refer to this problem as ‘brain bullying’.

5.  We are currently building a special education library for our special families to borrow specialized resources for their children.

 We excited about this new school year, and we pray that it will be one fashioned by our Heavenly Father, much good fruit in each one of us.