NCS Discovery Program

Northwest Christian School offers Discovery, a program of individual educational therapy for students with academic learning difficulties.

Philosophy
The Discovery Program is based on the philosophy that changing the learner rather than altering the environment is the most effective way to teach students to think for themselves. Students with learning difficulties are often passive and dependent learners. The goal of our program is to help them become independent thinkers and learners.

Program Distinctives
The Discovery Program is a distinctively Christian program as well as being educationally unique. The educational therapy process will not "cure" a student's disabilities, but will rather stimulate and improve deficit areas that have been identified through a series of tests. It is not a tutorial program for specific subject matter areas. Instead, the goal is to help a student learn how to learn. Emphasis is on the integration of perceptual, thinking, and basic skills. The program is individual so that the student is actively involved and thinking at all times. It is also intense because the student is asked to develop and verbalize strategies and defend answers.

Procedure
A complete battery of tests is administered to prospective Discovery students. The WISC-IV administered by a psychologist, identifies verbal and visual processing strengths and weaknesses and thinking skills. The Discovery staff administers an educational battery of formal and informal tests to further aid in determining specific learning difficulties.

Elementary students in the program are involved in three or four sessions of therapy per week for a total of 160 minutes. Secondary students meet daily with a therapist for one class period. The length of time a student is in the program varies according to the student's needs, with three years being the average.

Staff
Students are taught by educational therapists who are certified teachers and have also received graduate-level training through the National Institute for Learning Disabilities. Regular communication between therapist and classroom teachers helps ensure an improved educational program for the student.

For further information on the program and the fees involved, contact Mrs. Dawna Underwood at .