discovery
How do we know what a student’s strengths are? The first step: we ask. Too many young people struggle in larger high schools because their teachers don’t have time to know them, discover the way they learn best, help them imagine their own potential, and present them with opportunities to succeed and push past their limitations. Your student probably has a pretty good idea what her strengths are. If she’s not sure, we help her find out. Leelanau teachers, well schooled in theories of learning differences, understand the importance of knowing each student individually, and our six to one student-teacher ratio makes it possible.

capability
One student excels in memorization and attention to detail. Another does best when questions start with “What do you think?” Once we uncover your student’s learning strengths, we equip him with the language and the insights to explain to himself and to others how he knows. Empowered with self-awareness, he understands why he does better in some subjects and can take on weaker subjects with more confidence.

For some students, uncovering how they learn calls for extra time and attention. Our Learning Resource Center helps students, in particular those with language-based learning differences, to acquire the confidence and the tools they need to understand their own ways of knowing. Most importantly, we teach self-advocacy, so that students can identify and articulate their learning challenges and seek the accommo-dations they need to succeed.

building on strength
Our teachers find ways to affirm students’ interests, personalities, and special abilities in the classroom, while also challenging each student in areas of learning that present more difficulty.

Can your student consistently sink baskets from outside the three-point line? He has excellent gross motor skills and possesses an intuitive knowledge of trajectory. With that success and plenty of encouragement, we incorporate his affinity for sports into his physics class. We encourage the growth of his math skills by studying the statistics of his favorite team.

Is your student always drawing pictures of her friends? She’s working with scale and perspective, color and shade, even anatomy. Our teachers build on her interest in drawing to improve her learning in science. She classifies species by drawing plants and animals. Remembering large quantities of information becomes less difficult when she connects abstract language and concepts with her own images.

At Leelanau, your student finds out how she knows and, with confidence, how to grow her successes in every subject.