Core Skills Curriculum

Research has shown that competence in executive functioning skills such as time management, work initiation, self advocacy, and organizational skills is crucial for college and other post-secondary success. Students with learning differences often have deficits in their executive functioning skills, which can lead to problems with sustaining attention appropriately, considering actions prior to taking them, making connections between concepts, analysis needed for higher order problem solving, time management, and organization of materials. These deficits can be managed with appropriate interventions, and may not remain areas of difficulty throughout a student’s life, but they cause many of the problems that students experience in school, whether a given student is diagnosed as having attention, reading, language, or social issues.

These executive functioning skills, as well as other core skills crucial to academic and social success, are delineated and tracked using our Core Skills Curriculum (CSC). Progress on CSC learning objectives is tracked throughout each semester by teachers in the core academic classes, as well as by each student’s faculty advisor, and is discussed with parents during Parent/Teacher Conferences as well as periodically throughout the year. CSC progress reporting is also embedded in progress report forms and report cards.

The CSCs allow us to view each student as an individual learner with specific strengths and weaknesses, and to design and implement instruction and assessments that work with and help to remediate these learning needs.