Learning Support isn’t exactly something parents want associated with their children, and many still barrel down the road of parenthood playing ostrich as youngsters with learning needs are left straggling while their peers excel in school. However, those with the sense to shelve their egos, disregard social babble and put their children’s welfare before anything else have an avenue at their disposal with the potential to afford their kids a chance at a decent, self-sufficient life. Located in a tranquil, pine-covered spot in Jourit Al Ballout in the Metn district, Valley International School looks for all intents and purposes like your regular every-day school, and in fact in many way  it is. The vast majority of students enrolled at VIS follow either the Lebanese Baccalaureate or the American High School Program, and can expect to progress through all the standard stages of education. But where VIS departs from your typical school setup is that alongside, and running in parallel, to the normal curricula is a Learning Support Department that caters to the needs of children whose progress in education has been impeded by difficulties in the areas of learning, behavior, and/or social/emotional development. The students might have a variety of problems like attention or reading deficits, students who have had a gap in their educational life due to medical reasons, or as Hoda Wallace,

the Principal of VIS put it, the student might simply be a very introverted child. The secular school is one in a network of institutions that comprise the family of Learner’s World International School and include Adma International School, City International School, Universal School of Lebanon as well as VIS. While the schools operate independently, their main differentiating feature is individualized instruction and a learner-centered philosophy. All LW Schools provide inclusion services for students with special needs and individualized instructional programs for students who need that type of service, and utilize the services of School Development Consultants in providing specialized programs and training for staff.

Established in 1999 by SDC Director Shukri Husni, VIS was from the get-go, geared toward addressing a need that wasn’t being addressed in Lebanon. That goal was to offer students facing a variety of challenges the opportunity to reach their full potential, and all under the same roof with regular students. The key ingredient in this, like all LW schools, is that VIS is inclusive. Hyperactive children, those with Down syndrome, those with autism and regular kids all learn together, play together, and share everything together.

Depending on the student’s needs, the Learning Support Department offers a wide range of services in order to help the students in their academic and emotional development, including Individualized Learning Plans that set students an overall objective with specific sub-goals and a clear strategy of how to achieve those goals, individual counseling and advice, individual and small-group work both in class and in withdrawal sessions, Speech/Language/Occupational/Physical therapy and meetings for parents to engage in the development of their children.

On a tour of the school’s facilities, we had the chance to catch a glimpse of how the school put its “child-centered” philosophy into practice. In one classroom, regular students were mulling over multiple-choice questions for an exam, while in an adjoining room students with learning difficulties were chewing over the same set of questions. Although in seemingly identical scenarios, the latter students were afforded extra time and were also allowed to ask a certain number of questions. Once their particular needs were taken into consideration, those children were able to achieve as much as any of their peers.

Simply put, students whose learning abilities have been impeded by factors that can be remedied have some recourse. And with expert guidance and counseling, they can resume their normal academic journey instead of being shuffled off to technical school or even dumped into menial jobs because they were deemed incapable of learning. As one expert we met explained, if they can learn in a technical school, they can learn in a regular school, or conversely, they cannot learn in either arena. The real solution is to determine what is preventing the child from learning and then to resolve the problem.  

It is not uncommon for VIS school to receive students who are facing challenges in the traditional school system due to low levels of self-esteem. In these cases, a team of counselors, psychologists, educators and therapists, work to boost their self-esteem and raise their self-confidence so that they can get back on track with their studies.

However, where the school truly breaks the mold is in its vocational and life-skills program for students who encounter greater difficulties in the educational domain. The process was actually developed out of necessity, because once students hit the ages of 13 or 14, the school found itself unable to offer them anything more. Rather than wish them luck and send them on their way, VIS launched what they refer to as the “Fledgling Program,” which seeks to help challenged students lead independent lives at the personal, social as well as the economic levels.

The program begins when the student reaches the age of 14, and lasts for four years. In the early stages of the vocational program, students, working in groups, are slowly introduced to a variety of vocational fields. In the third and fourth years, after having had time to consider the students’ preferences, needs and capabilities, and in consultation with parents, the students, accompanied by teachers, try their hand in their chosen fields for a limited period of time.

The life-skills program focuses on aspects that most of us take for granted but nevertheless underpin the very fabric of everyday social interaction. Students are taught the basics of independent living such as how to count money, how to go shopping, how to cook, how to manage their appearance, how to conduct a conversation and so on. In addition to computers, photocopying machines, a computerized solving machine, musical equipment as well as resources needed for vocational training in arts and crafts that the school provides, a bus for the vocational program is also available on a permanent basis in order to transport students to different sites for training, including restaurants, supermarkets and other commercial enterprises. While we munched on cookies that some of the vocational department students had prepared, a teacher explained what a difference the program had made for a number of the students. Initially, those children had been in such dire straits that their parents could not conceive of letting them out of the house on their own. But over time, with the heightened confidence and autonomy sparked by the program, those very same children developed social circles and were perfectly capable of venturing out independently and socializing with their peers in locales such as malls and restaurants.

Although referred to as vocational, the program doesn’t neglect the students’ educational requirements. Included in the program is a Functional Academics curriculum that caters to the practical needs of the students and which includes English, maths, the sciences and social studies. The students also rejoin their peers for music classes, art, physical education and recreation. While VIS can comfortably accommodate and sustain as many as 250 students, the school currently hosts around 135 pupils. However, what it lacks in terms of student numbersit more than makes up with the teachers its employs – a whopping 50 of them and that doesn’t even include the ancillary staff.

According to Husni, most VIS teachers are qualified, and wield educational degrees, while several have been trained in special needs education from the American University of Beirut, the Lebanese American University, and Saint Joseph University.They also receive in-service training at school on an ongoing basis by specialists in thefield. The staff also includes clinical psychologists, educational psychologists,speech therapists and occupational therapists. Except for the last two kinds of therapists, which are employed on a parttime basis depending on the needs in that particular area, most teachers are employed on a full-time basis.

All this raised the inevitable question: how can tuitions fees from a mere 135 students cover the costs of a school that fields such a large number of trained specialists? It turns out Learning Support doesn’t come cheap. While the tuitions for regular students are equivalent to those at other private schools, the costs for LS, Wallace admits, are much higher. She puts this down to the highly personalized service the school offers, saying: “For every two students there is a teacher, and in some cases for every student there is one teacher.” And even in the case of regular students, the school’s child-centered philosophy follows a strict policy of keeping classroom sizes down to 15 pupils.

Tuition for regular students ranges from $2000 to $5000 per year. Depending on the services rendered, fees for special needs students add another $2000 to $5000 on top of the regular school fees, and for vocational students, the tuitions vary between a hefty $8000 and $10,000 per student. According to Husni, VIS, like other LW schools, also depends on the owners’ support to cover expenses and is attempting to network with non-governmental organizations in the field of special education to provide funding for the development of its services. As far as public perception is concerned, the administration admits that initially there had been a lot of resistance from teachers - and more importantly from parents - to Learning Support, which touched a sensitive spot. Ten years down the line, Wallace believes the topic has become far more open and that an increasing number of schools were viewing LS in a better light.

However, even with that progress, the school is still often slighted. Due to a lingering misperception and sometimes wary attitude toward Learning Support, and the relatively high proportion of LS students (about 20 percent), VIS is often perceived as being LSexclusive, a fact that can discourage some parents from enrolling their children into the regular division of the school’s program. Speaking to a number of experts in the field, we receive  the impression that parents of regular kids fear that enrolling their child in a school which also caters to special needs students implies the child suffers from learning disabilities. Furthermore, and greatly distressing, is the discovery that parents of some children with learning disabilities opt to forego LS because they feel the benefits do not justify the cost, even if they can afford it. Considering the amount of effort that goes into offering these children the attention and care that makes the difference between producing a well-adjusted, self-independent human being and one reliant on others for the most basic needs, we couldn’t help but feel admiration. But to see children from a spectrum of degrees of abilities functioning together in the same institution, and even in the same classes, that we found quite remarkable, and a breath of fresh air in a society that far too often chooses not to acknowledge reality. We hope in time that attitude changes, and children with needs get the opportunity to reach their potential.

By Thomas El-Basha