Chartwell School - Seaside, California | About Us | Message from Executive Director Douglas Atkins

At Chartwell we believe that the students who enroll in our program are capable of levels of achievement they previously have not been able to demonstrate, so we have set out to provide a special type of education based on the needs of the individual. Our immediate goal is to guide children toward becoming healthy, curious, confident and appreciated learners again. We believe that all of our students are capable learners who can discover new pathways to learn skills and apply knowledge.

Chartwell School uses diagnostic teaching methods to deliver a full academic program in a highly structured learning environment. Chartwell is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) to provide courses of study in grades K-8 that include all areas of language instruction, mathematics, social studies, science, fine arts, physical education, and an array of enrichment activities supervised by a professional staff.

The Chartwell program is as comprehensive as it is student-centered. The school-wide 1:6 student-teacher ratio and average class size of eight students allows us to focus our instruction on the assessed needs of each student and to provide instruction within a small class grouped for similar skill levels and learning styles. Curriculum design emphasizes skill development, while it also prepares students for the content mastery they will be expected to demonstrate upon transition to another educational placement any time along the K-8 timeframe.

The theory and practice of diagnostic teaching is central at Chartwell. Whereas many school placements will teach to a curriculum that has well thought-out design in scope and sequence according to grade level, only an environment focused on diagnostic teaching will be able to modify the depth and breadth of scope and adjust both the sequence of skills and content presentation to match the particular circumstances of an individual's learning needs. These needs will follow from the results of educational assessments that identify patterns of strength and weakness for an individual student. The resulting learning profile gives trained diagnostic educators the insight and confidence to build, deliver and continuously check whether an educational program is indeed working for a given child. Assessment confirms success or points to the need for instructional adjustment. This is an ongoing part of the diagnostic classroom.

Figure 1.
Closing the Skill Gap with Diagnostic Instruction

Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. (2003). Overcoming Dyslexia: A New and Complete Science-Based Program for Reading Problems at Any Level. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Figure 1 shows further how an assessment driven curriculum delivered by a trained diagnostic teacher can positively impact a child's academic achievement before the skill gap becomes too disabling. Note how the skill level (c) starts to close the gap between (a) and (b), or at least stop widening when instruction matches the need and learning style of the student. In fact, only by thoughtful and systematic assessment can the initial departure of (c) from the lower achievement curve (b) indicate that there is a real cause and effect relationship between what the teacher is doing and the resulting positive impact on the child's skill development. Tracking this process closely and over longer periods of time helps the teacher learn how each student learns. Using this process, the educational program for each student can become increasingly relevant to his or her individual learning needs.

Most students at Chartwell have dyslexia. They are as bright as their peers without dyslexia but respond best to types of instruction different than those that are often found in conventional classrooms. This is why we refer to "learning styles" and "learning differences" instead of "learning disabilities." Having said this, it is important to understand that while we can make significant progress in helping students overcome the "disabled" nature of his or her learning style, we cannot change the underlying causes of language or learning disorders. These are the result of how minds develop neurologically.

So, individuals are only "learning disabled" if they are not able to access the way they learn in order to become productive members of their culture. As a child and teenager that culture is influenced greatly by the K-12 school experience, as a young adult it is dominated by the college or workplace experience. The productive contributions, and, therefore, the quality of life for most adults is shaped in important ways by their early experience, and so at Chartwell we are great advocates of the earliest school-age intervention as the most effective way of improving a child's prognosis for a later healthy and meaningful adulthood.

At Chartwell School we seek to intervene at the earliest possible age before evidence of a learning difference is left unattended and becomes disabling on an emotional or intellectual level for both the individual and the family. Parents often understand this idea intuitively even while options and advice are not always empathetic.

Dyslexia can be the underlying condition that affects in varying degrees of severity the 15-30% of American children who in spite of adequate intelligence and educational opportunity have difficulty transforming the printed alphabetic symbols of words into the equivalent understanding they have of spoken language.

In this manner, dyslexic type learners are often said to have language processing disorders but it is not all of language processing that is affected. Dyslexic students have a type of language processing disorder that slows down or disorients their ability to distinguish the critical sequences of word sounds or transform the alphabetic symbols of print into the fundamental reading skills.

Not all children with language processing disorders have dyslexia, so a program designed to address the dyslexic type learner may have to be further modified with certain other types of language and learning difficulties. This is why children must be assessed for the specific and unique difficulties they are having before Chartwell can understand how to approach designing the capabilities and qualities of instructional intervention. This is why we pay such particular attention to the child's psycho-educational evaluation, intake interview and summer program observations before he or she first enrolls at Chartwell. We want to make sure that we provide the type of program that will be an appropriate match for each student's learning style.

Dyslexic individuals generally do not have the same severity of problems with listening or speaking that they have with reading. This is because the fundamental deficit among dyslexics is a type of symbol/sound awareness that cannot readily transform the stream of spoken language into chunks of syllables, letters or words related to that same spoken language as it would appear in print. This ambiguity between identifying difficulties with decoding and comprehending printed language, on the one hand, and between receptive and expressive spoken language, on the other, is sometimes why the dyslexic is described as having a Central Auditory Processing Deficit (CAPD). This is why the dyslexic, who is certainly struggling to process certain types of auditory information related to sound/symbol awareness, generally will not have faulty reading or language processing effectively remediated by isolated auditory therapies alone.

Dyslexic students are also sometimes diagnosed as having variations of memory disorder. This is only true to the extent that memory refers to specific types of short-term, sequential or phonemic awareness, and not to all types of memory. This is evidenced by most dyslexics who have substantially adequate memories for other sorts of learning not involving sequential academic demands like reading, spelling, writing or math calculation.

Dyslexia is the result of physically different structures in the brain that cause information to travel along different pathways than in the brains of non-dyslexic individuals. Sometimes this yields surprising positives, especially when the visual-spatial pattern recognition strengths of dyslexics yield innovative approaches to problem solving required by such disciplines as art or engineering, and in such group dynamics as theater or organizational leadership. Because this is the result of physiologically different, but not chemically different brain structures, those who rely on medicated therapies for skill development may be disappointed by the lack of a consistent or significant response in either social behavior or academic learning two independent dimensions of school activity that nevertheless have an affect on each other.

In fact, the lack of notably improved skill development in response to medication is one of the strong indicators used to differentiate between dyslexia and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Further confusing this distinction is the observation that many dyslexic children appear not to focus well on certain tasks such as reading, writing or math, because such students may have learned that increased effort does not always lead to increased achievement. This would be an example of the difference between a "Learned Disability" and a "Learning Disability." Under these circumstances, the research in our field consistently funds that medication will be less effective than systematic direct instruction geared to the individual's experience, motivation and learning style.

Some students at Chartwell do have ADD or ADHD. This condition is widely thought to have biochemical causes. To the extent that this is true, an individual student can be helped in part by a carefully considered pharmacological response. However, ADHD also can be made worse. This can happen if medicated responses are not supervised closely, if they are changed or stopped without proper consultation, if there is an inconsistent structure to home, school or transition activities, or if consultations do not include the right staff in the school as part of the therapeutic team. Only this complete team can adequately consider input, changing circumstances and the myriad consequences as children grow and engage evolving social and academic expectations.

The goal of the final phase of education is transition back into conventional educational settings. Every January, the faculty meets to evaluate the achievement and progress rate of students who have been at Chartwell more than one year. Those students who, in the opinion of the faculty, have attained a critical majority of the following criteria are considered good candidates for transition:

All students at Chartwell benefit from instruction designed to take into account the best research in both theory and practice for the above learning profiles. The challenge always before us is to know the learner and to provide the education necessary that he or she may transition successfully into a more conventional educational placement at the right time, for the right reason.

About Us : Message from Executive Director Douglas Atkins