Students Who Benefit Most From Academics West
The central purpose of creating a high support college preparatory school with a rigorous academic program is to create a supportive wrap-a-round environment. Academics West often serves as a home for students who do not fit in typical school settings who need greater flexibility and individualization. The common denominator of all our students is that they are bright, kind, and creative and have been unsuccessful in a typical educational placement. Academics West is also a place of diversity in both our student population and staff. This diversity is represented by students of different races, socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds and gender identities and orientations.
Our Upper School students are best described as “internalizers” because their struggles are more inwardly experienced than outwardly expressed. Students who internalize are often those who struggle with depression, anxiety, trauma, and other issues that make it hard for them to attend school and benefit from positive interpersonal relationships with peers. These students often have been diagnosed with co-occurring learning weaknesses or ADHD. Our CIA® model is designed to consider each student’s social-emotional needs and remediate learning weaknesses by using each student’s learning profile to develop an intervention plan to address areas of executive dysfunction. Simply, it is our intention that all Upper School students who successfully complete our program have rehearsed prosocial skills and become strategic learners able to autonomously succeed in post-secondary education.
Like our older students, our Lower School students are highly intelligent and resourceful, but tend to externalize their behavior during times of stress. It is not uncommon for a Lower School student to start Academics West because their pattern of behavior was not tolerated at their previous school. We craft a plan for each student to support their acquisition of adaptive skills to help them regulate and engage in learning and develop positive relationships with peers. Often, we have the rewarding pleasure of witnessing a once unhappy student who has felt marginalized and misunderstood evolve into a capable student. Like some of our Upper School students, our younger students also need to acquire effective compensatory learning skills instructed by our special educators who are well versed in our CIA® approach to remediation.
Is Academics West The Right Fit For Your Child?
The primary goal of our school is to be a safe and supportive environment that allows a student to thrive where they were unable to in typical settings. Some students only need basic accommodations (e.g., smaller class size, extending time, assistive technology, etc.) while others require more wrap-a-round support. Many of our families have found other settings are designed to help students with learning differences but do not provide adequate therapeutic support or vice versa. Since we can remediate both learning differences and provide mental health services, Academics West can meet the needs of most students with both mild to moderate learning struggles and emotional challenges. Our cross-disciplinary care model is highly structured and flexible so we can support the unique needs of each student.