News & Press

January 18, 2007  ---   FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Douglas Atkins, Executive Director

831.394.3468

 

January 18, 2007.  

Seaside, CA.     The Board of Trustees of Chartwell School is pleased to announce that the Chartwell Outreach Programs have received a grant of $30,000 from the Community Foundation for Monterey County. The grant will support Chartwell’s work to provide training to adult literacy tutors as part of a county-wide collaborative to improve literacy among working age adults and families with young children.

 

Since 1983, Chartwell has educated students with a wide range of visual and auditory language processing and learning challenges in a way that provides the learning skills, confidence, creativity and determination to return successfully to mainstream education and continue to learn throughout life.   Research has shown that these types of learning difficulties affect 15-20% of the population, and can make learning to read extremely difficult, even when a person has average or above-average intelligence. These differences are physically based and can affect the ways that the brain receives, processes, focuses on, comprehends, stores, and retrieves information. Because they are not outwardly visible, they are often overlooked or misunderstood. Struggling students may be told to “try harder,” even when they are already trying as hard as they can. Too often, learning difficulties of this type lead students to believe they are not as smart as other students, or that they are not suited for school, even though they may actually have the potential to be quite gifted and successful in fields such as mathematics, the arts, visual-spatial thinking, architecture, mechanics and engineering or conceptual problem-solving. Chartwell is the only school in the tri-county region with this specialty.

 

“We are grateful to the Community Foundation and all of the funding partners for this grant. We hope it will encourage many people to seek help to improve their reading abilities and achieve their potential,” said Kristen Atkins, Chartwell’s Director of Outreach Programs. “There has been much new research in this field during the past 10 years. It has shown that well-structured teaching can help all students succeed. We look forward to working with the many outstanding partners in this collaborative. We will share the latest research and materials, so tutors can learn how to identify gaps in specific skills needed for reading and works with each student to master those skills while building on his or her strengths.” 

 

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