The Kildonan School is a private coeducational boarding and day school in Amenia, New York offering daily one-to-one Orton-Gillingham language remediation and a college preparatory curriculum for students in grades 2-12 and PG (post-graduate). The Kildonan School is exclusively for students with dyslexia and language-based learning disabilities.
History
The Kildonan School was founded in 1969 by Diana Hanbury King and Kurt Goldman. The college preparatory program, currently with a 100% college acceptance rate, evolved from Dunnabeck, the one-to-one Orton-Gillingham based language remediation summer camp also founded by Diana King, which still takes place on the school’s campus every summer.
Ms. King taught for years at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. and at Camp Mansfield in Vermont, the latter of which was founded by Helene Durbrow, who studied directly under Dr. Samuel Orton. Ms. King has written numerous books on the Orton-Gillingham approach, and she lectures across the country and trains teachers in Orton Gillingham methodology in the US, in Bermuda, and in Asia.
The Orton-Gillingham approach
The Orton-Gillingham approach is a structured, flexible, multisensory way of teaching reading and writing. When implemented at integral times and in appropriate ways, it has been shown to remediate dyslexia to the point of “normal†counterparts. It remediates dyslexia by attending to the neural language-processing system of individuals with high IQs with a seemingly inexplicable deficit in reading or spelling, and departs from older methodologies that focused on the visual system.
Accreditation
The Kildonan School was accredited in 2003 by the Academy of Orton-Gillingham Practitioners and Educators and re-accredited by NYSAIS (the New York State Association of Independent Schools) in 2013. The Kildonan School currently has two AOGPE Fellows on staff who mentor each tutor the school employs through 70 hours of pre-tutoring training and the AOGPE associate/certification process.
Complementary programs
Dyslexic students learn language differently from other students â€" specifically, it has been posited that dyslexics compensate for lack of activity while reading in the angular gyrus (responsible for signifiers in language and residing in the back of the brain) with lots of activity in the inferior frontal gyrus (responsible for speech and residing in the front of the brain). Research shows, therefore, that dyslexic students tend to also have trouble with balance and coordination. In keeping with brain research that shows that language remediation relies on stimulating connections between brain networks, and specifically between the two hemispheres of the brain, The Kildonan School requires all lower school students to train in horseback riding and all upper school students to learn to ski. These two sports are balance sports, and so require students to make neural connections between both hemispheres of the brain.
Mission and philosophy
Kildonan’s mission of empowering students with dyslexia is in keeping with research by Brock and Fernette Eide and Ben Foss, which shows that a way to open up future opportunities for dyslexics is to play on their strengths. To this end, Kildonan encourages its staff to include The Dyslexic Advantage and The Dyslexia Empowerment Plan in their professional development plans.
Notable alumni
- Josh Hadar, sculptor
References
External links
- The Kildonan School official website
- Dyslexia
- Dislecksia the Movie
- The International Dyslexia Association
- The Orton-Gillingham Academy
- Orton-Gillingham Approach
- The New York State Association of Independent Schools
- The Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity
- The Dyslexic Advantage
- The Dyslexia Empowerment Plan
- Dr. Samuel Orton
- Helene Durbrow