Learning Department

Key's commitment to address individual learning needs grows out of its Mission Statement. With the recognition that children learn in different ways, the School's goal is to determine the strengths and weaknesses in each child's learning profile at an early age so that academic needs can be effectively met at each stage of development.

The Learning Department is devoted to serving students' needs and does so through the employment of diagnostic testing, curriculum development, research and faculty professional development, and tutoring. As the School has grown, and as the benefits of attention to individual learning needs have been proven time and time again, Key has added to its Learning Department faculty.

Beginning in 1976 when the first learning specialist joined the School, the Learning Department now provides services to students in Pre-Kindergarten through grade twelve.

The Department provides services such as the Upper and Middle School Writing Labs and Math Labs, parallel first grade, and support for Language Training and Workshop (taught in grades two through eight). The Learning Department staff also provides diagnostic work across the Divisions, support for faculty instruction and methodology in terms of new ideas and materials, and enrichment opportunities for students as well as support for the School's Life Skills program and the new-to-Key mentoring program for teachers. Further initiatives include faculty professional development in curriculum design and assessment techniques.

Highlights

  • SCORE Research Project - April 2008

    Key School has been invited to participate in a research project under the leadership of Dr. Gerard Gioia, the Chief of Pediatric Neuropsychology at Children's National Medical Center.

    Read More
  • Emily Legum - Learning Department Chair

    It was spring semester, 1968. The country was in turmoil, reeling from the recent assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the escalating war in Vietnam, and, before the end of the academic year, the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. Emily Legum was student teaching in a twelfth grade Government class outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

    Read More
  • Professional Development Speaker Addresses Brain Development

    Key School welcomed Gerard Gioia as a guest speaker during the faculty and staff professional development day in December.

    Read More
  • Learning and the Brain Conference

    This spring, Learning Department members Emily Legum, Sally Trapp and Janet Favero, school counselor Jennifer Blanchard, and Lower School Head Mary Jane Milner traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to attend the fourteenth annual Learning and the Brain conference.

    Read More
  • A Blueprint for Understanding

    For the past several years, The Key School faculty has been engaged in the study and the practice of curriculum and assessment design. Professional development initiatives on assessment reform were launched at Key in a 1995 workshop ...

    Read More