Key School

Providing opportunities to help
students achieve their full
potential!

Mission Statement

Working in partnership with parents, The Key School provides students with learning differences the educational opportunity to overcome their differences and to achieve their maximum potential in school and life. In addition, The Key Learning Center serves as a community resource to educators and parents in the Western North Carolina region.

Goals

• To close the gap between academic performance and student potential.
• To provide individualized, multisensory language instruction to develop new pathways for learning to read, write, and spell.
• To provide a comprehensive curriculum, encompassing basic core content to enable students to succeed in their transition to other schools.
• To enable students to experience success and to accept and value themselves in a safe, supportive environment by educating the heart, mind, body, and human spirit.
• To teach students strategies to become independent, responsible learners.
• To provide support and education to the families of our students.
• To develop a partnership with the public schools and home schools and to serve as a resource to the community.

About the Key School

The Key School, named after Adelaide Key, was established in 1997. Its purpose is to provide students with learning disabilities the educational opportunity to overcome their disabilities and to achieve their maximum potential in school and in life. The Key School offers full-day and half-day programs. Full-day programs include core classes in reading comprehension and math; a language tutorial block addressing decoding, encoding, written expression and grammar; a "Drop Everything and Read" session; content classes such as social studies, science and integrated projects; physical education, art, and computer classes twice weekly.

The school provides a unique and essential service to children with learning disabilities and/or attention deficit disorder by offering an alternative to traditional education. By creating a teaching environment that removes major obstacles to learning, students close the gap between their achievement and their potential.

Teacher Maggie McLaney and some Key School students.

In the core areas of greatest need, such as reading, writing, and spelling, Key students benefit tremendously from the unusually low student-teacher ratio of 3:1. In areas such as math, computer skills, science, social studies, social skills, physical education and art, a low student-teacher ratio is maintained as well, usually 6:1.

Currently, there are 73 students enrolled, including 14 part-time and 59 full-time students. Most of the full-time students will return to public schools when their program is complete. The Key School serves students in grades one through eight. There are 24 staff members: a director/teacher, six full-time teachers, three part-time teachers, one administrative assistant, a multisensory and a language consultant/teacher trainer.

The Key School curriculum is unique to Western North Carolina. It is anchored in multi-sensory language instruction which is individualized and combines auditory, visual, and tactile/kinesthetic pathways to learning. It teaches the structure of language and the tools to put sounds together to spell words and to take them apart to read.

The Key uses the Orton-Gillingham approach, which includes the following components: sound/symbol association; a systematic and logical approach to language; a gradual, orderly progression of learning; a cumulative and integrated path, so that students move from known to new material; an alternating focus on reading and spelling so that both develop together as a skill; a cognitive approach, so students think through language problems, rather than guessing at words; and a focus on fluency through drills. This approach is emotionally sound, in that it takes into account how the student learns and the degree of effort needed to master language. It is based on over sixty years of research.

Students in public schools also face other obstacles that prevent them from reaching their potential.They face many distractions and large class sizes. The traditional school curriculum is inappropriate for many students with learning disabilities, and because of a lack of resources, they face a group approach to teaching rather than the individualized approach offered at the Key School.

Above: Key students enjoying their new facility.

Why is this unique program needed?

The human brain is an incredible piece of machinery. In 65% of human brains, the left hemisphere is larger than the right hemisphere. In the brains of people with reading, writing and language struggles, a high percentage show either a larger right hemisphere or equality in both regions. Many times the larger right hemisphere is highly specialized, and therefore the person has great gifts and creative abilities. Some famous examples of people with this condition are Albert Einstein, John F. Kennedy, Agatha Christie, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Sometimes it seems the two hemispheres are fighting for power. Placed in a situation where analytic skills, the domain of the left hemisphere, are required, the person experiences difficulty, especially in the processing of language.

The person having this trouble with language is often diagnosed with dyslexia. In order for a student with dyslexia to learn to read and process language, several learning pathways must be established and reinforced through multi-sensory instruction. New information must be presented through visual, auditory, and kinesthetic modes. The kinesthetic mode builds motor memory and in most cases this is the strongest memory. Unfortunately, traditional education does not always offer this method of learning. Instead, the majority of students are expected to learn through using one sense, such as the visual, as in the use of worksheets. Additionally, students in traditional education must compete with as many as 25-30 other students for the teacher’s attention.

The physiological and neurological differences of the dyslexic child can be overcome through the ideal teaching environment offered at the Key School. Structured, expert teaching enhances brain functioning, learning and life skills far beyond what might be expected from a child’s physiological makeup alone. The students currently enrolled at Key have all experienced failure. Although they have bright minds, their educational needs were not met in traditional classrooms. At the end of the school year, the lives of Key School students have been transformed. They are more confident and academically successful, and have become more proficient readers, spellers, and writers.

It is disheartening to learn from the Journal of Learning Disabilities the consequences of having a learning disability that has not been properly addressed:

• 35% drop out of high school, twice the rate of non-disabled students.
• 60% of adults with severe literacy problems have undetected or untreated learning disabilities.
• 50% of juvenile delinquents tested are found to have undetected learning disabilities.
• Up to 60% of adolescents in treatment for substance abuse have learning disabilities.
• Only 10% of children identified with learning disabilities in public schools receive appropriate services.

At the Key School we can prevent such consequences in the lives of children if given the chance to supply them with the tools they need for achievement in basic academics. The skills they will acquire at Key will help them become confident and successful students in the schools they return to, and viable and productive citizens in the future.

"I always struggled at other schools, but the Key School is what I needed to learn."

- Key School Student

Key School PAC Dates