Student Services Update: Expansion of Learning Support

The 2021-2022 school year has been a year of growth for our students, faculty and the Student Services department. My colleagues and I in the Student Services department share a great deal of enthusiasm in working with your children each day.  Over the past two years, we have identified several areas of growth and implemented an infrastructure for Golda Och Academy to better serve the diverse learning needs of our students. To achieve this goal, we have increased levels of support, collaboration and communication. One of my proudest accomplishments as Director of Student Services has been building and solidifying the Student Services and Learning Support teams so that we can further support the individual learning needs of all our students. With this in mind, I’d like to share with you our vision for reaching our potential as we focus on enhancing our learning support efforts in the coming year. Based on extensive work with specialized consultants and internal reflection we are focusing on four priority areas as we advance the Learning Support program:

 

We know that individualized attention relies on the number of professionals who are able to provide it. Over the past several years, we have focused on growing our Learning Support team so that we can ensure students’ needs are being met. Right now, we are focused on hiring additional highly-qualified staff for key positions on the student services team that will support students’ development as well as transition points at GOA. This past year, we hired a new dedicated sixth grade learning specialist who will remain with the class next year and will work with the incoming 6th grade class as well. In the Lower School, we also added a new learning specialist to complete our team of dedicated grade-level specialists. 

 

For the 2022-23 school year, we will be hiring a school-wide Learning Support Coordinator who will oversee all the learning specialists on both campuses to help manage caseloads and employ cutting-edge, evidence-based strategies.

 

Expanding the Learning Support team is also providing us with the opportunity to expand how we are reaching students. With additional staff, we will continue to increase training and professional development for teachers. Our learning specialists and teachers are collaborating and teaching lessons together to ensure that information is accessible to all our learners. We have also prioritized providing professional development on differentiated instruction for our entire faculty. 

 

In addition, to ensure we are meeting the needs of each student, we are continuing to place a strong emphasis on collaboration between our campuses. As a student progresses through GOA, our teachers, guidance counselors and learning specialists partner with one another to facilitate a smooth transition.

 

Parents know their children better than anyone. A successful partnership between parents and school is a key indicator in the success of students. We hope to nurture the home/school connection in support of student learning by increasing communication and parent education. This year we held well-attended parent programs such as “Raising Resilient Children,” “Ending the Silence - Shining a Light on Mental Health,” and “Chasing Childhood.” We are already planning parent education programs for next year, and will start the year off with “Demystifying the Psychoeducational Evaluation Process.” 

 

In keeping with the spirit of kehillah (community), a parent focus group was held to discuss their experience with our support services. In our ongoing effort to strengthen the parent-school partnership, there will be many more opportunities for parent involvement. 

 

As you may know, we recently announced important changes to the academic schedule for the Upper School in 2022-23 so that students have more ownership over their time. One of the many goals of this approach is to allow students more time to access academic support. We want students to feel empowered to incorporate academic support throughout their day so they have confidence to advocate for their needs with their teachers and/or learning specialists. We will be revising the operating hours of the Learning Lab so that students can access help from the learning specialists more frequently as well as for study skills classes, and targeted group instruction. We plan to facilitate group sessions, as well as grade-level programming.

 

Thank you to our kehillah for the support you show our students and one another. I look forward to sharing more updates with you as we progress in this journey to expand learning support opportunities at GOA. We want to hear from you! Please be in touch with your child’s learning specialist or guidance counselor at any time with questions or suggestions that you have. If you have any questions about our plans or our work, please do not hesitate to contact me at ljaffe@goldaochacademy.org. For more information, please also visit our website at https://www.goldaochacademy.org/programs/student-services.

 

Warmly,

 

Lori Jaffe

Director of Student Services