The Greenwood School is a specialized boarding and day school for boys from grades 6 through 12. Greenwood is situated on a 100-acre campus outside the village of Putney, Vermont in the southeastern part of the state. The Greenwood School is accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), approved by the state of Vermont, and is a member of the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS).
Video The Greenwood School
History
The Greenwood School was founded in May 1978 by Thomas and Andrea Scheidler to carry on their ground breaking work in the field of education for children diagnosed with "learning disabilities". The Scheidlers viewed their students not as "disabled" but as uniquely gifted and designed a curriculum to reflect and to serve their needs. The Scheidlers felt methods of teaching in mainstream schools disadvantaged students who had a different way of approaching learning: tying their academic progress to their weakest skill. With the support of a group of parents, educators and professionals in the field of dyslexia, the Schiedlers formed a non-profit institution. They rented, and eventually purchased a campus in Putney, Vermont.
Tom Scheidler held a Masters' degree in psychology and philosophy; Andrea Scheidler held a Master's in education. Together they designed a structured curriculum that taught needed academic skills, but embedded those skills in a much larger program that stimulated and advanced students' knowledge in all academic areas. Tom and Andrea Scheidler were opposed to the institutional/clinical model for teaching normal children whose main obstacle to success in school was that they had a preference for oral and hands-on learning. They believed that the education of children who were underachievers, who were diagnosed as "dyslexic" or as having "attention difficulties" was best addressed by giving them intellectual and creative challenges in the classroom using discussion and verbal instruction. Learning was accelerated by teaching students' natural strengths and demonstrable aptitudes. Because the Scheidler's design for the school embedded a variety of learning experiences in a challenging pre-prep curriculum, Greenwood was not a "special school". It was an enriched pre-preparatory program tailored to meet the needs of a specific population of students.
Class days included tutorial help in rote skills, especially reading and writing, but by tailoring the entire program to meet student needs and by employing their unique methods for teaching via oral tradition, the Scheidlers kept costs down for families and schools. Students were challenged to perform at their best both socially and academically. Many graduates reflect that when they got to high school, the Scheidlers' Greenwood program put them ahead of their peers.
The enriched pre-preparatory curriculum included all elementary and middle school subjects, but there were other required courses as well. Unique to the Scheidlers' approach were structured exercises in the spoken word, visual art, manual skills and dramatics. With a deep understanding of the link between the image and the word, with respect for the often stunning imaginations, visual memory and auditory skills of many Greenwood students, and recognizing the need for developing strong and confident oral communication skills, all students received these courses.
Tom Scheidler published articles about his work using guided imagery (psychosynthesis) techniques with Greenwood students, and concerning his utilization of metaphor to help students get past psychological and emotional barriers to learning. He lectured internationally and also served on the board of NEASC. Tom Scheidler's work dovetailed with Andrea Scheidler's speech, performance and visual art curriculum to encourage imagination, foster attention and self-discipline. The Scheidlers discovered that when students who were "acting out" were helped to channel energies into theater, storytelling and speech, students gained confidence and social skills that benefited them later in life.
Andrea Scheidler also lectured about her work. She received recognition and grants from the Windham Foundation of Vermont and from The CINAR Corporation of Canada to mount public theatrical productions featuring all her students. In 1999 her original medieval morality play, "The Unicorn", was made into a 90-minute film production, funded and filmed by the CINAR Corporation in Montreal P.Q. The film was shot in both Vermont and Canada and featured dramatic performances by nearly all the Greenwood students as well as a complex Morris sword dance directed by Tony Barrand PHD and Margaret Dale. Written and directed by Andrea Scheidler, costumed by Ann Bebko with the participation of the school's skilled faculty, the film of "The Unicorn" had only two public showings. The production unfortunately became unavailable to the public due to a financial scandal involving the founders (Ronald Weinberg and Micheline Charest) of CINAR.
The alumni of the Scheidler's Greenwood School program have entered many careers including business, finance, law, medicine, art, social work, broadcasting, film making, fine woodworking, culinary arts, mechanics, music, education, competitive sports, environmental conservation, technology, and entertainment.
After the Scheidlers retired in 1999, Greenwood became a trustee-guided school. Key trustees who have reshaped Greenwood into the more clinically modeled institution it is today have included Lewis (Sandy) Madeira (deceased), Paul Siegfried, Ronald Weinberg, George and Cheryl Lilly, Jaques Krasny. Mr. Weinberg had a special interest in education and with his then wife, Micheline Charest (deceased) produced educational programs for public television through their CINAR Corporation. Ronald Weinberg was no longer serving as president of the Greenwood board when he was, after having been under investigation since 1998, regrettably found guilty of plagiarism and convicted of 120 million, for financial fraud in Canada in 2016.
There have been four changes of directorship at Greenwood between 1999 and 2017. Few of the Scheidlers' methods for classroom teaching, teacher training, or spoken word continue at Greenwood. The school's focus has changed in many ways. The current teaching community under a new director is strong and the school exerts creative influence on the field of special education. The curriculum is varied, includes creative classes and the school has expanded to include high school. Greenwood continues to mount the annual Gettysburg Address Speech Contest.
Maps The Greenwood School
Philosophy and Academics
Today, Greenwood is a Special School for boys who have a variety of academic learning challenges. With a 2:1 student to teacher ratio, classes are small at the Greenwood School, ranging from 1 to 10 students. Greenwood's remedial language program uses a diagnostic-prescriptive approach, including the Lindamood-Bell and Orton Gillingham methods. The program targets all aspects of literacy, including phonology, phonics, morphology, and orthography. Students spend one hour a day in a language tutorial to study and practice reading, spelling, comprehension, handwriting, and writing from dictation. All instruction is multisensory, structured, sequential, and sensitive to students' individual learning styles. Because written work is such a difficult process for most students with a language-based learning disability, Greenwood students spend an additional period in writing instruction. Assistive technology programs such as Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Inspiration and Kurzweil are used to aid students in the writing process. The language remediation described above is combined with an academic curriculum that includes science, history, literature, art, music, crafts, and athletics. Twice daily study halls provide students with the opportunity to apply skills independently. All students attend weekly group social pragmatics lessons, and for some students speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, and/or additional social pragmatics are also part of Greenwood's academic program.
Facilities
Boarding students live in the Greenwood dormitory, which has twenty-four student rooms, four faculty apartments, and three common rooms. The dorm is designed to allow developmental grouping. The remainder of the resident teachers live in adjacent buildings.
The academic center houses the school library and assembly room, the dining hall, a STEM center, and 12 classrooms. A long time partnership with the Yellow Barn Music School and Festival has added nine eco-friendly, cabin-like classroom spaces that Yellow Barn uses as rehearsal spaces during the summer and Greenwood uses as supplemental classrooms during the school year.
The gym, which includes an indoor skate park and climbing wall, is used for physical education and large gatherings. An expanded woodshop and pottery studio and the administrative building complete the list of buildings on campus.
Sports and Recreation
A gym teacher and four coaches head a variety of seasonal sports and outdoor activities, including interscholastic soccer, basketball, and baseball as well as intramural track, rock climbing, volleyball, bowling, archery, outdoor leadership, orienteering, and cross-country and downhill skiing. A network of trails that wind through the 100-acre (0.40 km2) campus are used for hiking, mountain biking, and cross-country skiing. A 2-acre (8,100 m2) pond is available for science classes, fishing, and boating; and the campus has an outdoor skate/bike park and dirt jump area. The winter sports program includes a weekly trip to Mount Snow for downhill skiing, snowboarding and terrain park. Outdoor activities are emphasized, the gym facility was originally intended to be a covered basketball court for use during rainy days.
Vacation program
The Greenwood School's CONNECT Program provides dynamic, challenging and fun community service-learning programs individualized for boys with learning differences that foster self-reflection, mutual responsibility, and a commitment to community.
National Recognition
The Greenwood School was featured on Public Television's National Education Report in 2007.
On February 2013, The Greenwood School announced that they were going to work together with Ken Burns on the documentary "The Address." The film was aired on PBS in the spring of 2014.
The school also was known for hosting the first annual Learn The Address national competition in 2014, where students from chosen schools would compete while reciting The Gettysburg Address. The national competition has been going on since then and other schools have hosted it since then.
Notes
External links
- The Greenwood School Website
- Greenwood on National Education Report
- International Dyslexia Association
- The Association of Boarding Schools (TABS) profile
- Learn The Address
Source of article : Wikipedia
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