In our fall 2015 issue, the story on the Landmark School for students with languagebased learning disabilities (LBLD) spurred thankful letters from readers, especially Landmark parents and students. Thank you for this article on Landmark! (“Decoding Drake’s Dream”) I am so very grateful that my child has this “second chance at school” — I only wish all LBLD kids could have the Landmark experience. I truly feel that because of Landmark, my child has a future. There is a huge need for reform in special education and parity in access to schools like Landmark and Carroll [School, in Lincoln, Massachusetts]. Without resources it is very hard to get district funding; it’s a long, hard fight. —liza vincent holland My son became a student of Landmark as an eighthgrader this academic year. I am grateful for all the talented staff here. — kathy janvrin gelsomini Thank you. Great article. If it wasn’t for Drake, I don’t know where I would be today! — pete spezia, 1984 landmark graduate
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DREAM A look at the school that Charles Drake, Ed.D.’70, started more than four decades ago to help students who were like him: struggling with dyslexia and other language-based learning disabilities. by brendan pelsue photography by kieran kesner
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n the leafy campus of the Landmark School in Manchester, Massachusetts, math program director Chris Woodin, Ed.M.’89, stands in front of what can only be described as a contraption: a grid of ropes and pulleys attached to the side of a building, each rope with a plastic pennant flag tied to the bottom. Along the edges of the grid, numbers painted on boards mark out Cartesian coordinates — the horizontal edge is x, the vertical edge is y — so that the whole wall is a three-dimensional version of the graphing planes that generations of middle school math students have dutifully plotted out in their notebooks. “Let’s take a simple equation: y=2x,” Woodin says with the gusto that tends to overtake him when he explains how he teaches math. “Okay, now if x is zero, what’s y going to be? Zero, because two times zero, right? So our flag here where the x value is zero” — he indicates the pennant at the far left corner of the grid — “is not going to move, right?
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“But if we take a step over here, where x is one, what’s the y value going to be? Two, because one multiplied by two is two, right? So let’s do that.” Woodin hoists the x=1 rope until it is level with the 2 value on the y coordinate plane. “And if I keep going, pretty soon you’re going to have a pretty good illustration of what it means that y=2x,” he says. He’s right. The rope grid is the abstract Cartesian coordinate system made physical, and it’s only one of many nontraditional tools he’s developed for teaching math concepts to students with language-based learning disabilities (LBLDs), the population Landmark has specialized in teaching since it was founded in 1971. On the same campus, he’s constructed an oversized clock, a gridded outfield for rotations and transformations, and a baseball wins-and-losses chart for percentages. In each case, the thinking is the same: If students can associate the abstract language of
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hen Drake founded Landmark, he was looking to fill a need he had experienced first hand. As a young man growing up with dyslexia in Braselton, Georgia, he often struggled with reading and writing despite public-speaking skills that helped him in a successful first career as a minister. One teacher even laughed when he wrote an essay about wanting to be a writer. To cope, he developed a technique of breaking reading tasks down into their smallest possible units — a practice that allowed him to count success in small ways and on his own terms. These habits held him in good stead over the 10 years that he completed his doctorate at the Ed School, where he studied with Harvard Reading Laboratory founder Jeanne Chall, who empha-
sized an individualized, explicit, phonics-based approach to reading instruction. After graduating in 1970, Drake ran a dyslexia diagnostic center in Wellesley, Massachusetts, but found there was nowhere to send his clients once they were diagnosed. He had teaching experience from running remedial summer reading programs at Hebron Academy in Maine and decided it was time to start a school of his own. It would service students with diagnosed nonverbal learning disabilities and what they describe as “average to above-average” intelligence. And it would teach according to six core principles that still guide the Landmark School today: 1. Provide opportunities for success. 2. Use multiple modalities. 3. Offer micro-unit and structure tasks. 4. Ensure automatization through practice and review. 5. Provide models. 6. Include the student in the learning process. These principles would be enacted throughout the curriculum but primarily in one-on-one daily tutorials where students would focus on their specific areas of weakness. Often, this meant breaking words down into phonemes and morphemes, their smallest parts, in order to decode the mechanics behind more complex ideas like meaning and syntax. But approaches varied. All learners were different, Drake thought, and their instruction should be, too. With little cash on hand, Drake procured a mortgage on an old brick mansion in Prides Crossing, Massachusetts, about 30 miles north of Boston, by using promissory notes from friends and HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
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It took me 10 long years to get my son to Landmark and a village of supportive professionals who gave their time to make it happen. No parent should have to fight that hard with their school just so their child can learn to read. I am so happy it referenced the change needed in Washington as there are so many dyslexic supporters lobbying for change there as well as in Massachusetts. My son has been at Landmark a total of two weeks. He is a different person than he was prior to us getting him there and I will be forever grateful. — nicole fuccione mitsakis
It only seems fitting that in this issue of the magazine, an issue that praises the importance of making mistakes when it comes to learning, we should point out two mistakes that we made in the fall issue: In our feature on the Landmark School, we wrote that Charles Drake founded the school to service “students with diagnosed nonverbal learning disabilities and what they would describe as ‘average to above-average’ intelligence.” According to Susan Tomases, director of marketing and communications for Landmark, that’s actually incorrect. “Nonverbal learning disabilities appear in people who often miss social cues, struggle with abstract thinking — essentially, they struggle with communication that isn’t verbal,” she says. “Oftentimes people on the spectrum have nonverbal learning disabilities. Our admissions department works very hard to recognize this distinction by reviewing applicants’ neuropsychological testing and through interviews. Our profile of students is quite narrow in that they have a language-based learning disability. In fact, they often excel socially and with nonverbal forms of communication. This may seem like a subtle difference, but in the world of special education the disparity is immense.”
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On page 8, we clearly chose the wrong word in the story. “White Men Talking.” Chad Velde, Ed.M.’15, said beneficiary, not benefactor!
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problem-solving with specific physical movements that help them move through an equation’s component parts, then they are more likely to develop the bone-deep understanding of math concepts that will be essential to their high school careers. Woodin calls this method “whole-to-part” learning because the emphasis is on understanding the relationship between the question and the answer rather than on being right or wrong — a notion that flips traditional classroom dynamics on their heads. Woodin’s approach is typical of Landmark, a combined boarding and day school that is known nationally and internationally for pioneering teaching methods that can transform the academic performance — and self-esteem — of LBLD students, many of whom arrive reading far below grade level and leave ready for college. The story of that success dates back to the school’s founder, Charles Drake, Ed.D.’70, who created a culture, with dozens of Ed School alumni, of experimentation matched with a unique clarity of mission. Over time, this combination has led to fruitful collaborations with researchers, including many at the Ed School, such as Professor Kurt Fischer, Assistant Professor Gigi Luk, and Lecturer Todd Rose, Ed.M.’01, Ed.D.’07. As Landmark nears its fifth decade, its outreach arm is consulting with school districts and finding new ways to reach educators. The hope is that as one small school on Boston’s North Shore continues to impact the lives of a small group of nontraditional learners, it can also have an impact on the national education conversation.
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