Fredericksburg Parent

44 Fredericksburg Parent and Family • July 2021 To unlock the emo onal capacity to tackle academic challenges, students need a learning environment where they feel their teachers and peers support them, appreciate them as individuals and ac vely work to help them fi nd success. This is the community that Chris na Carson has built at the Marshall School, a private school in Spotsylvania County. The Marshall School focuses on helping children build the learning and thinking strategies needed for a life me of real-world success. The school's smaller environment and customized learning programs are good for all children and have been found to be par cularly helpful for children di- agnosed with ADHD, dyslexia, auditory processing disorders, learning disabili es, and execu ve func on disorders. Carson talks about the successes she has seen as the school held in-person classes throughout the 2020-21 school year, and what dis nguishes the school's approach to educa ng children with a wide variety of learning styles and needs. What defi nes the learning community at the Marshall School? I think a story from the band concert we held at the end of this school year really illustrates that. One of our performers was a student who is gi ed in playing the drums, but he has a lot of anxiety. Just before his performance, he had a panic at- tack. Our teachers kept the program moving on to the next act to give him some me to work through that. We as teachers talked with him and talked about how we believed in him, but what was so remarkable was that so many students came out to him and said, "You've got this." He calmed down, went out, and performed. I looked back and all of the students were standing and cheering him on. In the end, the en re audience gave him a standing ova on. This is the perfect picture of who we are. We face obstacles daily, and despite that, we overcome those challenges. This wasn't just a success for one student, but for everyone else at the concert who encouraged him. ´ What about the school encourages that kind of community? At the Marshall School, we talk openly about our struggles, whether they are related to learning, social skills, or anxiety. We do this in our morning mee ng at the start of each school day, and we model this as teachers. But we don't stop there. We ac vely give our students strategies to overcome their struggles. We talk through books, such as Stephen Covey's "The Seven Habits of Highly Eff ec ve Teens," to give students and teachers the language they need to talk about their challenges and the tools they can use to overcome them. Instead of covering up their strug- gles, never talking about them, and never ge ng the help they need, our students can grow and build skills that don't come easily. Iden fying and addressing the specifi c diffi cul- es they are encountering with academic and social skills is a prerequisite for students to be able to succeed in school. ´ What is unique about the Marshall School's approach to academics? It all goes back to the reason I started the school. We know children are individuals, with diff erent interests and learning styles. We have seen stressed-out students trying to keep up with the "one pace, one method" style of learning that is prevalent in most other schools in this area. As a special educa on teacher in the public schools earlier in my career, At the Marshall School, Learning Starts with a Supportive Community INTERVIEWED BY EMILY FREEHLING ´

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