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Our Academic Approach

Language Immersion and STEAM

At Courage Schools we take a minds-on, hands-on, multisensory approach that enriches the gifts students with language-based differences bring to the classroom. Courage Schools class sizes are intentionally small so students receive the individual attention that meets their academic needs. Your child will be known and loved by the Courage Schools community. Courage Schools teachers are trained in structured literacy and have experience and enjoy working with students with language-based learning differences.

We utilize a STEAM/project-based approach to enrich and extend the visual, spatial, and creative strengths of students while giving students the tools and strategies needed to understand and manage their language difference using a structured literacy approach. This dual approach allows students to understand how their brain works. It allows for the support needed to help them develop their language skills while celebrating and developing their strengths.

Why a STEAM based approach?

Many children with a language-based learning difference have documented strengths in analytical, visual, spatial, and creative learning areas. A STEAM approach allows students to utilize these strengths while learning in an environment that celebrates these gifts and supports, extends, and enriches their strengths. This approach shows students who may have experienced academic struggles due to language development differences that they are capable and have strengths in school that are relevant and needed. We focus on students being celebrated for their strengths and not by their identified learning needs.

Students will have designated times each week where they are actively engaged in projects and activities that integrate what they are learning in core academic classes to solve real-world problems. This interdisciplinary approach relies on demonstrating how science, technology, engineering, art, and math are interrelated and support the understanding and application of all academic areas. Students will have opportunities to dig deeper into problems that are presented to them to understand the intricacies of the issue and with this knowledge will design, develop, and build a solution to the problem.

A STEAM/project-based approach helps students develop resiliency and perseverance as they see and understand that there are multiple ways to approach and solve a problem and that even after coming up with a plan or solution, there are always ways to continue to learn and grow and shift their initial response to a problem.

Why a structured literacy approach?

Structured literacy teaches the structure of language across the speech sound system (phonology), the writing system (orthography), the structure of sentences (syntax), the meaningful parts of words (morphology), the relationships among words (semantics), and the organization of spoken and written discourse. Courage Schools uses a combination of structured literacy approaches in the classroom.

Students have 90 minutes of structured literacy each day. These 90 minutes include decoding, encoding, reading comprehension, and language comprehension. 

Courage Schools admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It doesn’t discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs. These inclusions are further extended to all persons regardless of sex, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation.

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