What is Educational Therapy?

 

The kind of students who benefit from Educational Therapy often have difficulties "learning how to learn." An educational therapist goes beyond teaching content and combines educational and therapeutic approaches to create a safe space for individuals with learning challenges to understand their own learning needs, receive the prescriptive intervention and scaffolding they need to bring about academic progress, and develop the kind of tools that bring about independence as a learner and self-advocate.

 

Educational therapists are highly trained in interpreting formal assessments and neuropsychological evaluations, as well as being attuned to the social and emotional aspects of learning problems (including the patterns of behavior an individual develops to mask the underlying ways in which they're struggling). ETs specialize in using research-based, scaffolded, and multi-sensory methods that are prescriptive.
 

Educational therapy is the combination of evaluation, remediation, advocacy, case management, and team collaboration with parents and allied professionals (such as teachers, speech & language pathologists, occupational therapists, and psychologists) to give a struggling learner their independence. 

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EDUCATIONAL THERAPY CAN BENEFIT STUDENTS WHO:

• struggle with number sense and understanding math concepts

• lack math fact fluency

• struggle with attention

• have difficulty with phonemic awareness & phonics

• leave out vowels, letters, or whole syllables

• struggle with spelling

• write very slowly or very little

• struggle to read fluently

• have difficulty comprehending what they read

• have difficulty with time management and organization

• have trouble following oral or written directions

• produce minimal written work even though they may be verbally expressive

• have limited vocabulary

• find it difficult to initiate tasks independently and are task avoidant

• lack study habits or skills