While reading, The Motivation Breakthrough, by Richard Lavoie, I came across a quote which perfectly summed up the philosophy all staff at TMS will follow. The quote was taken from a book Between Teacher and Child by Haim Ginott. I believe this an important understanding of the role of a teacher:
I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in my classroom.
It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the
weather. As a teacher, I possess tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or
joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or
honor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will
be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or de-humanized.

The staff at Timothy Memorial School will also, at all times, take responsibility for student learning. If a child does not succeed at a task it will be the teacher who must change not the child. The teacher will change the approach and find the way that each particular child learns and then teach in that way. When a child does not learn it is through no fault of their own and they should not be blamed. It is the teacher's job to teach. Thus the title TEACHer.

If you have a facebook page PLEASE become a fan at Chase Community Giving http://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/. Then VOTE for Timothy Memorial School. TMS DESPERATELY needs this $25,000 grant to give a 3rd grader tuition to attend. Please help us to be the one of the top 100 charities with the most VOTES!!! There are 5,000 charities able to participate!!! We need your vote!

anxiety and learning

For some children who have experienced repeated failure, finding a safe, successful place to start teaching takes some time. As a teacher, I need to keep backing up to find a place where the student can feel calm and confident with the work presented. Once that place is found, we can then continue, in very small steps, to add new skills from there. Anxiety alone can prevent reception and retention of new material.

Blog Debut

Hello and welcome to the new Timothy Memorial School blog. We hope to make this a vital resource for information about our school and for information about special needs children in general. Feel free to leave your comments and share yur opinions on these pages. We look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you.