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SYCAMORE – Students with emotional or mental disabilities have been able to turn over a new leaf in education thanks to a unique opportunity within the school district.
Last week, some students sat at a desk quietly working or receiving help from teachers on assignments in two of three interconnected classrooms at Sycamore High School. Others sat at a computer, working on their reading, writing and arithmetic.
This is no traditional class – it’s the Learning, Emotional and Academic Fundamentals, or LEAF, program, a district-wide special education program that provides students with mental or emotional problems an opportunity to brush up or hone their academic skills in an environment more suitable for them than a traditional classroom. Students can even attend just for one class a day if they need to.
“Most of the students in LEAF have either been identified with either having an emotional disability or a health impairment,” said Jan Benson, the district’s director of special education. “The health impairment might involve anxiety, depression, or could be bipolar disorder.”
LEAF began about five years ago in Sycamore School District 427, but underwent a major technology overhaul in the past year. Now, in addition to the traditional classroom structure with teachers and writing desks, students use the Apex Learning website, an online program that can help students supplement, or even broaden, a subject they need extra help in.
“We went from one class last year, to first semester this year we had 18, now we have 21 courses [taken at the high school],” said Mark Holstein, special education teacher at Sycamore High School. “I have a student who can’t come to school because of emotional anxiety. I’ve been to his house two or three times now to get him set up in the system.”
The LEAF model was created about five years ago to assist students with emotional disabilities, before the advent of Apex Learning, according to Benson.
At the beginning of class on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, LEAF students review social and success skills, and Fridays are always a review of the week, according to Doug Kelly, special education teacher and department chair at Sycamore High School.
“They talk a lot of about social things, but they also talk about testing,” he said.
However, in its year run, LEAF’s Apex Testing hasn’t only been used by special needs students.
There was one time, Holstein said, when a student needed credit for a higher level of French than what’s offered in Sycamore schools to study abroad, and Apex Testing helped supplement that, Holstein said.
“It’s available to every student in the high school, but what we’ve done is built a school inside a school,” Holstein said. “We have Sycamore High School, but we built the LEAF school as a segment under the umbrella of Sycamore.”
Results with Apex Testing vary at the middle school, however, said Sycamore Middle School special education department chair Cody Shears.
“We have three students enrolled to varying success,” Shears said. “Two students are doing fairly well on it, another one is not. You have to be a self-starter with that program, and we’re working on that.”