Adios Amigos...saying good by to Academia Cotopaxi.

Taking a moment to pause and look at the learning support systems AC, I get a chicken bone in the throat. We began with 2 special education teachers, 1 teaching assistant and a coordinator that was also the school psychologist and PreK-2 counselor. We had students with mild needs. We had one small hallway of a classroom and one classroom that middle and high school shared. Now we have 5 teachers, 3 instructional assistants, and a full-time coordinator. We work across 5 classrooms throughout the school serving students with needs ranging from mild to intensive. And those are quantifiable measurements...the amount of educators we had, the amount of space we had, the level of students we had.

If we take a look at the qualitative measurements we see even more...we have a faculty that is willing to work hard to serve each student. We have a staff (cafeteria, admissions, landscaping) that supports our program as well. We have a wide-reaching community that celebrates differences and challenge. We have an admin team that supports us and regularly seeks our students' input into the larger community and curriculum. We have a life skills program that is not only growing our students social and independent skills, but allowing them to experience employability skills and fundraising that few high school-levelled students ever experience. Each student now has a supportive team team including their siblings, their parents, all of their teachers, their principal, their counselors...but this is something we can not say for all students at AC. However, it is a testament to acknowledging the high level of need for these students and matching it with a fully integrated team. These students who are seen as intensive need may, in fact, be some of our most successful students because of this level of support.

So now we have found ourselves in a place where we should use our intensive needs program as a model for how all students should be supported at our school. Didn't see that coming, did ya?