Trend: Directly addressing (not just accommodating) learning disabilities

New take on learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties: change the brain (Komo News):

“A new school in Red­mond might change the way we think about learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties. Instead of teach­ing kids how to accom­mo­date a dif­fi­cul­ty, the school hopes to actu­al­ly change the brains of stu­dents, elim­i­nat­ing the dis­abil­i­ty altogether.

Dai­ly class work at the Eaton Arrow­smith Acad­e­my is like noth­ing you’ve seen before. Stu­dents rotate through exer­cis­es like trac­ing sym­bols and speed read­ing time on a clock. They are intense brain exer­cis­es, done 35 min­utes at a time before rotat­ing to the next task. They are meant to trans­late into bet­ter skills in tra­di­tion­al sub­jects. Many of the stu­dents have been diag­nosed with dyslex­ia, dys­graphia or dyscalculia…

While the Red­mond acad­e­my is the first in the U.S., the school is well estab­lished in Cana­da. It got the atten­tion of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadel­la and his wife Anu, as they looked for a pro­gram for their daugh­ter. She start­ed at the Van­cou­ver branch of the school and has grown into a con­fi­dent learner…The Nadel­la’s are such strong believ­ers, they invest­ed $100,000 in a research project at the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia, study­ing the effects of the program.”

Learn more:

• Bar­bara Arrow­smith Young: Every kid should prac­tice stress reduc­tion and tar­get­ed cog­ni­tive exer­cis­es at school