Noble Academy's Head of School, Gayle Kolodny Cole, shares her personal journey of discovering Noble Academy at the perfect time for her career, but after her own son with learning differences had already graduated from high school in California. With the perspective of a parent who would have been deeply grateful for a referral to Noble, she encourages anyone who knows a family with an LD child to consider sending them this episode, in which she explains what kind of student profile meets the school's admissions criteria.
https://www.nobleknights.org/admissions
Gayle:
During my job search from California in 2024, Noble was the one. As soon as I discovered the opening, I knew it was the school for me. I read the position description and the school's profile, and I called my husband, and I said, I found it. Not long after that, I had a conversation with someone involved in the placement for the headship. And as we talked more about what the school needed and wanted, I texted my husband again, and I said I believed I was the one for the school too.
So from the first day I started my headship in July of twenty twenty four, I've had parents describe to me that same feeling about Noble and what they felt about it as a fit for their child with a learning difference. They tell me what I already know, that Noble Academy is special and that they feel so glad they found it. So, why does a school that brings me so much joy also sometimes sting my heart just a little bit as well? Why are these conversations that I have with my husband about loving Noble Academy bittersweet for me. Well, that's because we found Noble at the perfect time in my career, but we also found Noble too late for our lives as primary and secondary school parents ourselves to a son with an IEP and special education needs.
In today's episode, I want to talk about how Noble nurtures a particular profile of students with learning differences because my goal is for other families who need and could benefit from Noble now to find us. Maybe that family is yours. Maybe this message speaks directly to the concerns you have for your child and you feel like Noble will be the right fit. Or, maybe you know a family that you think should check out the school with the mission to empower students with learning differences to pursue their highest potential within a comprehensive, supportive educational environment. If you do, if you know a family like that, send them this episode.
I know that my husband and I would have loved to receive something like this. Before I get too far into the episode, I want to say how deeply I understand that no school in this world is right for every learner. I understand that some of the schools my son attended were good for other students. For him, who as a boy struggled monumentally with a math disability, dyscalculia, as well as with attention challenges and anxiety, the schools he attended were inadequate. Even after we changed schools and moved across town, believing each school would be better, it was always the same.
Also, I want to share that while it pains me that our son missed out on Noble, it also would not have been right for his sister, a typical learner, or even for some of my son's friends and classmates whose struggles were either more behavioral or more intellectual than my son's were. Because Noble has a program built for a certain range of learning profiles and teachers highly trained to meet those kinds of specific needs.
Okay. So let's get more into the details. If you have a family or know a family where a child in grade two or older is struggling primarily because of dyslexia, dyscalculia, auditory processing, memory, academic fluency, processing speed.
I am here today to say both as a parent and an educator, it would be a good idea to check out the rest of Noble's criteria and admissions requirements on the website, nobleknights.org.
We will not be right for every single learner who fits the issues I mentioned a moment ago. And that's not because there are kids we don't care about. It's because we want to accept students we know that we are well prepared to successfully serve as part of our mission and through our unique programs.
What is the Noble program? At its core, Noble offers a specialized educational environment designed specifically for students with learning differences. Our approach combines small class sizes, personalized instruction, and evidence based teaching methods to help our students thrive. Our teachers are highly skilled at working with students who have average or above average intelligence, who benefit from the small class size and who welcome the personalized support, who learn differently than neurotypical students, and who have a desire to understand themselves and how they learn so that they can become self advocates for the resources that help them succeed. In the admissions process, we look for a willingness to try a new school.
The ability to get along socially with peers and collaboratively with teachers and behavior that adheres to our community expectations. Regarding students with autism, Noble can be appropriate for some students with autism, specifically when their primary learning challenges align with our areas of expertise dyslexia, dyscalculia, processing issues, etcetera. It's important for me to note this as a mom to an autistic son and as an educator. At Noble, we evaluate each student individually to ensure our program can effectively address their specific learning profile and needs. Here are some of the unique Noble features that have stood out to me this year.
First, self advocacy. One of our five belief statements says, students who are taught self advocacy skills can become successful lifelong learners. Every student at Noble learns to articulate their specific learning profile, understand their strengths, and identify what supports help them succeed. It's remarkable to watch a sixth grader casually and confidently explain to me something like this. I listen better when I can doodle about the history lesson while we watch the video, and then I remember it better too.
These aren't skills they arrived with. These students who tell me these kinds of stories developed those skills and that self knowledge right here. By graduation time, our students don't just understand their learning differences, they've learned to embrace them as part of who they are and how to navigate a world that is not always designed for their brains. Second of all, we have a very intentional schedule here at Noble that has been developed and iterated on to best suit our learners, and we're always iterating on it when we think we need to. Students start and end their days with their advisors.
They have sixty minute classes in what we call a waterfall schedule, which I'll admit sometimes that confuses adults, but it doesn't confuse the students. And that means that they don't always have one subject, let's say math, at the same time each and every day. We also build brain breaks throughout the day and we include mindfulness at every grade two through 12 and every grade two through 12 has recess. Every school should do this. There are blocks of time in our day at Noble for skill building and for getting extra help in an area of struggle.
Before the students go home, they pass through a checkpoint to make sure they have everything that they will need. Also, let's talk about sports and extracurriculars because they're important at Noble. Many of our sports are no-cut, so every student can experience being part of a team. If traditional school athletics were sources of anxiety, exclusion, or frustration, that goes away here. Many of our kids come from situations where homework battles consumed their evenings, and eroded family relationships, and left everyone pretty exhausted.
It also can mean there was no time left for extracurriculars. At Noble, we do indeed assign homework, and we build time into the day where students can get started on their assignments, and they can get any extra help they might need. Evenings can be spent on extracurriculars and family dinner or simply just decompressing. One parent said it to me kinda like this. They said, “For the first time since kindergarten, we're not fighting about school at home. I finally just get to be his mom again, not his tutor or his taskmaster.”
There's another really important thing you should know about Noble that I probably should have said earlier in this episode and that's that we implement the Wilson® reading program with fidelity, and that has been nothing short of transformative for our dyslexic students. Wilson's structured literacy approach provides the systematic, multi sensory instruction that research has proven most effective for students with reading differences. What makes our approach special is both the expertise of our Wilson certified instructors and the way in which we integrate those strategies across all subject areas. Students don't just learn decoding strategies in isolation, they apply them in science, history, and literature discussions.
Math in lower school and middle school is multisensory, and high school students progress from algebra one to algebra two with other noble math offerings including advanced functions and modeling, AFM, discrete math, precalculus, and consumer math. Now, I have just talked a lot about what we do here at Noble. It's important to note some things we do not do. Noble Academy does not provide therapeutic services and we do not support special behavioral accommodations. What comes after Noble?
Not all of our students go on to college, but many do, and we are proud to support students on many different types of successful pathways. In terms of college, whether they begin with a community college, a university specializing in learning disabilities, or a college with a special program within a program, or a traditional four year university, we make sure to prepare them. Our alumni work in a wide variety of fields including the medical field, as educators, in finance, flying planes, running their own businesses, and all kinds of trades. I'm leaving out a lot of things, but that just gives you a broad overview of the wonderful pathways many of our alums have taken since Noble opened in 1987. Noble graduates leave not just with academic knowledge, but with self understanding, advocacy skills, and confidence that will serve them throughout their lives.
Our alumni know how to ask for what they need and how to leverage their unique strengths. That is the Noble difference. If what I'm describing sounds like it might be the solution for your family, I encourage you to visit nobleknights.org or contact our admissions office and learn more. Don't wait until it's too late as it was for my family. The right educational setting can make all the difference in your child's academic journey and self confidence.
Noble might just be the place where your child finally feels understood and empowered to learn in the way that works best for them. Thank you.