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All Kinds of Minds has developed a variety of programs to
help parents, educators, clinicians, and kids understand and manage learning
issues. All are based on a neurodevelopmental approach to learning, a method of
identifying the specific brain functions that affect the ways a student learns
and performs in school. Our tools enable us to search for recurrent themes in a
student’s learning and performance, themes upon which we can build an
individualized management plan.
Each of our programs follows the same basic process for helping a child with
difficulties in school.
Our process starts with in-depth assessment by parents, teachers, and/or
clinicians to develop a comprehensive learning profile—a kind of balance sheet
that accounts for the student’s strengths, weaknesses, and interests. This
approach also allows us to pinpoint the exact breakdowns in learning that are
interfering with an individual’s school success. We look carefully at each of
the functions of the brain that can affect a student’s learning and
performance, including memory, language, attention, and the ability to organize
information. We also assess neuromotor functions such as fine and gross motor
skills or physical coordination, as well as social cognition—the ability to
understand as well as have successful social interactions, and higher order
cognition—being able to solve problems, think critically, or reason about
oneself and the world.
Through a process called "demystification," we help children (and their
parents) understand specific differences in learning*. We provide kids with
both the language and insight to deal more effectively with their individual
strengths and weaknesses. We believe this empowering and respectful process
makes kids part of the solution and helps them feel better about themselves. It
encourages optimism and collaboration between kids, parents, and teachers, and
restores motivation by giving students a positive vision of their futures. We
believe that "demystified" kids are far better prepared to implement bypass
strategies or direct interventions (described on next page) and can also better
recognize and appreciate individual differences in others.
Based on their understanding of a child’s learning profile, parents, educators,
and clinicians can help the child devise methods to become a more productive
learner. Ideally, all parties collaborate to create a practical action plan
that the student can easily implement at home and in school. In addition to the
tactics developed by All Kinds of Minds, other provisions might include
medication, tutoring, counseling and additional services.
Below are the types of recommendations All Kinds of Minds has developed:
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Bypass Strategies (Accommodations) - Bypass Strategies help
the student learn how to work around a weakness, so that she can experience
success. One such strategy might allow a student to do extra work in an area of
strength, while reducing demands in an area of weakness (e.g., write less, but
read more than classmates; write compositions using a word processor versus
paper and pen; compose a song rather than build a model).
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Interventions at the Breakdown Points - Interventions involve
children in activities specifically designed to strengthen an area of weakness.
For a student having difficulty organizing his thoughts for an essay, for
example, interventions such as applying pre-writing strategies, breaking the
task into steps, or working with a checklist can lead to better written output.
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Strengthening of Strengths - These are strategies that allow
children to keep on using and improving the parts of their minds that work
especially well for them.
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Affinity Development - This is a process intended to help
children discover and deepen their natural interest in particular topics or
subject areas (such as cars, horses, or nature).
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Armed with a learning profile and action plan, the teacher, the child, and
parents can put them into practice. As in all efforts to bring about change,
the child’s profile and plan are reviewed periodically, in order to monitor
progress and make adjustments accordingly.
Read about the process teachers learn to use in their classroom to help
students to succeed.
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