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Post: Putting the "I" Back in Education
Two and a half months of summer dust was jarred this past
week, unable to hold ground against the reverberations of
metallic drill sergeants. Full of renewed purpose, bells
rang with authority, delineating time and scattering
students like flocks in flight. Ringing, however, is only
the prelude to the din facing teachers this Fall, paling in
comparison to the shuffling of seventy feet or the drumming
of three-hundred and fifty fingers.
Do the math and you will find that average class sizes, to
the dismay of the likes of Rouse and Wenglinsky, are
growing, in some cases with the number of students reaching
beyond the thirties and into the forties. From all that we
borrow in education from the Greeks, from the etymology of
pedagogy to the design of the columns that support our very
schools, never did it seem plausibly that we would also
have to borrow strategies from Thermopylae.
Alas, here we are, battling, not to subdue an enemy through
means of balanced odds, but educate a child. A child, as
in the singular. As in his or her needs are different from
the thirty or so that surround and blur the image of the
one. Begging the question: How do we put the “I” back in
education?
Mary Jane Freeman spent twenty-five years in public
education, first as a teacher and then a guidance counselor
before striking out on her own to seek an answer to this
question. In the early 1990’s, Ms. Freeman joined the
Independent Educational Consultants Association and began
working privately with families, making recommendations
regarding boarding school and college placements for
students based on their “I”ndividual circumstances.
Recognizing a greater opportunity to help, Ms. Freeman and
her husband, John, founded NewPoint Learning Center in
1999, a supplemental education school aimed at creating
customized learning solutions for students.
Unlike most supplemental education centers that focus on a
fixed, remediation curriculum, NewPoint’s roots lay in more
complex educational services. In addition to providing
Educational Consulting, Ms. Freeman partners with Gary
Patrick, PH.D., recent coauthor of ‘Tackling Academic
Barriers’, to conduct comprehensive psycho-educational
evaluations. Together, Ms. Freeman and Dr. Patrick have
seek to provide not only answers to families regarding
their individual students, but solutions.
A decade now in the making, NewPoint Learning Center offers
customized one-to-one tutoring, study skills, and test
preparation options combined with a referral network of
child psychologists, psychiatrists, occupational
therapists, version therapists, audiologists, and more, all
with the purpose of reversing the ratio. Creating a
village to raise each child.
NewPoint Learning Center is growing and has a variety of
career opportunities available. If you have ever dreamed
of owning your own learning center or starting your own
school visit, but have struggled with the how, visit
http://www.newpointlearning.com/Franchising.aspx.
The cacophony of feet and fingers may complicate education,
but it can never remove the “I”.
NewPoint Learning Center
Posts on this thread, including this one
- Putting the "I" Back in Education, 9/03/09, by NewPoint Learning Center.
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