In 1999 my family and I moved from Memphis to Brentwood, Tennessee. Upon exiting the Memphis city school system and entering the Williamson County School system I was placed on an IEP, individual education plan. Due to my lack of preparation and learning in Memphis schools I was take out of my regular math and reading classes each school day and placed in a specialized learning environment with a 4:1 teacher to student ratio. After about three years I was able to graduate from my IEP and rejoin the general student learning classes during instructional time. At the Easly community center I saw a need for this type of model. Many of the students would come to the center struggling with the materials they had learned at school that day. Many students would be from the same class; some would grasp the materials quickly, others would take more time to understand what concepts. What I found was that once a student had been given individualized attention and shown a couple of the sample problems one-on-one they normally did very well with the rest of the assignment. It simply took time and effort with the child to get them to grasp the concepts. For me in elementary school large learning environments were not the best way of learning for me. The IEP plan allowed me to gain the foundations to succeeded in the standard classroom. Im sure that due to budget and staffing constraints offering IEPs for these students would be much more difficult, however I do feel that many of the students could benefit from this one-on-one experiences. From my obsorvations and tutoring of the students it wasn’t that some of the kids were not smart, they just needed a different approach to learning than what was being provided in their schools.
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