Small class size afford our teachers the flexibility of working with our students on an individual basis or in very small groups. We utilize multi-age-level classes to create an atmosphere of a heterogeneous group of communicating and collaborating individuals. With guidance in this environment children become proficient in respecting and understanding children and adults of varying ages.
We integrate classical subjects, such as reading, writing and arithmetic, into our unique and meaningful curriculum for any given three-month unit-theme (e.g. World Rivers, Oregon Trail, Botany or China). White Clay emphasizes an understanding of the traditional subjects such as: Reading, Language (including Latin and Greek roots), Mathematics and various forms of Literature.
We provide a personalized education at White Clay Learning Center by analyzing each child's unique intellectual neuro-developmental construct. This analysis then allows our teachers to formulate a learning plan for each individual child. We strive to optimize each child's learning strengths, as we realign their weaknesses. We aim to provide each child with the understanding of how they best learn, and give them the tools to use in order to make this optimal learning occur throughout their lives.
Weekly adjustments. Every week our students dive into lessons within each of these subjects, based on their individual progress. Our teachers assess understanding weekly and then assign follow-up work for the students to complete during their home study time that week. Back at school, we weave these concepts into the remainder of our week as we explore our unit-theme, which focuses on a variety of investigations and activities, spanning all subject matter.
Enriching and informative materials aid us in enveloping our students with meaningful content. At White Clay Learning Center we do not purchase textbooks, because they tend to lightly gloss over subject matter. Instead we keep a library of information that the children refer to daily throughout the unit-theme. We also purchase a wide variety of resources and materials for each theme we plan. In addition, we carefully select math, language and reading workbooks from our favorite publishers, which will specifically target your child's academic abilities.
Learning Differences at White Clay. White Clay Learning Center's intimate, individualized and holistic educational program is also effective in educating some children with mild to moderate social/learning differences. These differences in children range from the highly gifted to those who struggle in the traditional classroom environment. This all inclusive environment benefits all of our children as together they experience daily lessons of how to work with, how to adapt to, and how to understand a more realistic and varied population of people. Our individualized curriculum is planned and implemented by our classroom teachers and Individualized Education Specialists. Tuition rates for this program are set on an individual basis.
Extracurricular subjects are also an important part of our program. White Clay Learning Center’s talented "special subject teachers" provide us with our art and conversational Spanish classes. When appropriate, our "special subject teachers" integrate our unit-theme topics into the students' weekly lessons. White Clay Learning Center students also develop an understanding and appreciation for the literary and dramatic arts through their participation in theatrical performances and poetry readings (includes their own writing and set making) each year.
Parents have the opportunity at White Clay Learning Center to participate in their child’s lessons during the school week. Our certified teachers will create a complete activity plan for our students each week. The activities and lessons planned, are presented and explored with your child on our three group interaction days of Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday and are rich in collaborative, creative, and hands-on activities.
Our learning center fulfills the remainder of the required school hours by allowing our parents to supervise one or two of our independent study days themselves. The more independent learning activities such as; spelling, language practice, rewriting and reinforcement lessons are accomplished during a more condensed time at home.
Please see our tuition page for complete overview of how our curriculum reflects these options.