The Linda Christas Difference

enthusiastic student All courses offered by Linda Christas are tailored to individual student aptitudes, interests, skill levels, learning style, and emotional preparedness rather than working from set syllabi. As a result, courses become more relevant to the student than if they were offered to a group using the same approach for all.

As R.F. Bernard, a credentialed teacher in private practice notes, "If the credentialed teacher has the freedom to concentrate on areas with which a student has the most difficulty, and the freedom to de-emphasize those areas that the individual readily commands, there is no doubt that a course of any kind will be more profitable for that student. The same is true with method. For example, if a student is primarily a tactile learner, the routine visual and auditory methods of instruction need to be de-emphasized or abandoned for that individual. Classroom one-size-fits-all delivery models are far less effective and far more frustrating to the student whose learning style is not congruent with the method adopted for group teaching."

Background:

As a general rule, public and private middle schools and high schools in the United States are required by circumstances to adopt a curriculum first, student last formula for the delivery of educational services.

That is, school boards or private committees decide what should be offered in classrooms of twenty to forty students grouped by age. Subsequently, this 'approved' curriculum is then delivered to administrators, teachers and counselors to carry forward.

Administrators, teachers and counselors in public and most private schools have little information regarding individual students prior to sessions beginning on a specific day and date.

Students arrive on campus, are grouped by age, and the planned material is delivered. (Deviations from approved curricula are difficult to obtain from ruling boards and committees.)

There are several disadvantages involved with the curriculum first, student last service delivery systems:

a) Students do not generally ripen like fruit on a tree at the same time and in the same way. Age grouping, therefore, often misses the target for the individual student, since between ages twelve and eighteen, the human brain develops in unique and unpredictable ways from individual to individual.

Curriculum order and content should ideally be organically presented over time so as to maintain student engagement and promulgate a sustainable academic environment consistent with the individual student's natural development.

b) Not all students are prepared to begin the learning experience at a time arbitrarily designated by a board or committee. Personal or family circumstances of which administrators, teachers and counselors are not aware, may create insurmountable obstacles to learning for an individual student. These obstacles may not have been identified and/or remedied prior to an arbitrarily selected start date. This is done, not because of any intentional negligence on the part of school staff, but as a consequence of the top-down educational structure within which all are laboring.

c) Students quite naturally have specific skill levels, aptitudes and learning styles which cannot be addressed in classes of the size generally assigned to middle school and high school teachers in both the public and private sectors.

For example, often in a group setting, tactile learners are placed at great disadvantage, simply because of the delivery options available to the teacher.

It is common for tactile learners to be identified as ADD or ADHD prone when in actuality the restlessness of these students is due to the lack of congruity between their learning styles and the adopted universal delivery system.

Putting all of these factors together, the chances are greater than fifty percent that a randomly selected student in any classroom in the United States will be disengaged from the experience being offered.

Disengagement can also originate elsewhere, of course.

Negative peer pressures have been found in several major studies to be consistently detrimental to the academic achievement of several subgroups of U.S. students. Also, extracurricular activities and paid work exceeding twenty hours per week have been determined to be factors which have eroded a once pronounced international American lead in student achievement.

Linda Christas has adopted the student first, curriculum last delivery model encouraged and accredited by the International Association of Schools and Colleges.

That is, immediately upon enrolling in one of the Linda Christas middle school or high school programs, Holland testing allows teachers and counselors to be provided point-in-time information regarding the aptitudes, skills and learning style of the student. Curriculum is then negotiated in a way that supports rather than frustrates the natural learning inclinations of each individual.

In this way, student disengagement is held to a minimum, the ultimate result being a student far more intellectually advanced and emotionally mature than would otherwise have been possible.

The most effective colleges in the United States have responded to such students with as much as a four to one preference over traditionally educated middle school and high school graduates.

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