Would this kind of school alt have been better for you?

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I recently form an artical on yahoo learned there is a public funded and run alternative school not that far(is far out of my district though) form where I am thats been around for maybe 40 years.

This school is advertised for unique students(I think that means us) were unlike special ed programs were they only hold kids back in this one they also focus on the childs strengths and push them harder in that area to maximise the child's potential.

Some main points of intrest are
-No tests
-No homework
-100% indiviualized education plans
-Focus on organtic learning
These are the links the 1st being the elementry, 2nd being the high school, its newer.
http://alphaschool.ca/about/
http://schoolweb.tdsb.on.ca/alpha2/Home.aspx

I normally don't support these kinds of seperation however as an aspie with just about all the learning disabilitites one can have I really think this would worked much better for me, I spent who knows how meny days at normal school, got a grade 12 diploma never failing a class and learned almost nothing at all from it as the class pace moved too fast and I got left behind around the 3rd or 4th grade and failed to retain anything. I also was never really challanged in other subjects I was already good at so again I failed to learn anything and never got to show the other kids what good work I could really do and that I infact was not stupid. My special intrests were often discouraged and disaIlowed where as this school would have encourage and foster them into employable skills. I left school with no friends and I was bullyed really hard through out, I think if I had gone to a school with a decent population of people like myself I would have made friends my age that I would have then have for a lifetime. Thanks to the bullying(teachers and kids) and the stress from trying to keep up in class and related depression I was just too burntout to move on too collage or anything, infact I'm still fearful of people and the education system. The normal model of education failed to prepair me for anything or grow me as a person in any useful way. I have been teaching myself most of the useful skills I know aside from a couple shop teachers that took a likeing to me in high school.

I think this alternative model of schooling would have been a great way for me to actually understand and learn things past what I did aswell as feel more confident and actually enjoy school and maybe actually make some genuine friends createing real social development instaid of the social anxiety I developed in its place. The enviroment I think would have been far less judgemental and far more inclusive of everybody and their differences.

What do you think? Am I going crazy here?

Last edited by rapidroy on 11 May 2013, 11:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

oh my gosh, i would LOVE this kind of school.
unfortunately, it does not seem to be a high school diploma type school, which means pretty hard to get into college, which is my goal.

Wouldnt have worked for me in any way. The thing I was good at, was learning outside of school where it is silent and tests, because of me being able to leanr well as long as I was outside of school. So the two things, that made me succeed school would not exist in your kind of school.

While my greatest misadvantages were everything that was about being in class.

I got better in school, when I joined advanced engineering school, because it was more like european universities, so instead of getting told every minute what to do, it is upon you to reach the schools learning targets. If you do better by listening in school, ok. If you did better by learning silently outside school from books, also ok. As long as I was in basic school, were everything depended about being in class, I sucked totally.

I'm not sure on that, I would have gladly taken some sort of filler course after to do it, i'm sure if I actually learned something at this school the course, make up test or whatever would have been not all that hard compaired to struggleing through normal high school.

What if your strength is with learning but you fail miserably in the social sense? It's not like individualized eduction plans can accommodate for that. I was also good with rote memory (ie. most tests) and bad wit learning in class.

True, however for me personally I found I tended to do better socially with other aspies and those with really eccentric personallites and intrests, neurodiverce etc. I think the culture at a school like this would be far more accpeting of different types people and the general perspectives of the kids and teachers would then reflect that, instaid of me being the werid beheaveing odd intrest loner kid I may have been known as the artisticly advanced and creative kid as an example. The kind of people who made it hard, bullyed and intimadated me the most simply would not have been accpeted at such a school according to the discription. Its no garentee of making friends and developing social skills however at least I may have had a fighting chance at it, something normal school failed to provide me.

I was fine with passing most tests as the anwsers usually came out of our notes and I often was given "cheat sheet" type notes to study from to increse the odds I would pass so all I would have to do is remember 50% of the note's anwsers for a few minutes. Often I would not do that not well on tests if it was outside my natural strengths, I could have lived without tests, its more the organtic learning and lack of homework that would have helped me actually leave school retaining actual learned skills and knowlage with a real understanding of them.

Normal schools seem to have taken on a "must pass/no fail" type of attitude and becouse of that properly teaching learning disabiled/aspie/ADHD etc. people does not matter at all, they like me just get passed through to the next grade and while I did enjoy passing this simplistic approch was not really benifical to my learning/understanding.

If you care at all about having a professional job after graduation, then skip university and go to trade school. Social graces matter much more in jobs requiring a degree than they do in jobs requiring only a certificate or two, so be forewarned that you might be shut out from education-appropriate employment if you go the university route.