How is The Lewis Clinic and School, and the
education it provides, different from what is commonly found elsewhere in the
nation's classrooms? The Lewis Clinic and School is
different in every respect save one: that is, we share with other schools the
desire to merit our nation's greatest public trust, which is the education of
our children and the empowerment of our most valuable educational resource,
their teachers.
The Lewis Clinic and School has created a rare model in this
country where a diagnostic and research clinic and a school are integral
parts of the same educational entity. This is one of our most
important differences and our greatest strength. The Clinic and School
integrate teaching and diagnostic perspectives garnered on both sides of the
educational blackboard: the perspective of multisensory educational practices
in the classroom, and the perspective of clinical research into the brain·s
learning processes.
The Lewis School has developed an advanced,
integrated educational system that replaces rote learning, passive
memorization, and the teaching of isolated "scatter skills" in
unrelated areas of content, with multisensory processes and strategies that
actively engage the many capacities and senses of the brain in every learning
experience of every student.
1. A
Lewis School Education: The Role of The Lewis Clinic for Educational
Therapy
The Lewis Clinic for Educational Therapy not only delivers
the results of research directly into the classroom but also provides the
results of every student's educational evaluation directly to the student's
teachers. At The Lewis School, each child's education
is based on the clinical assessment of his or her learning strengths and
weaknesses in all areas of perceptual and academic functioning.
Every classroom teacher at The School is trained in The Lewis
Clinic as a Multi-Sensory Learning Therapist. This training includes
observation of educational evaluations and the opportunity to continue in the
role of Test Administrator. The Lewis Clinic has participated in educational
research at The University of Pennsylvania Hospital, Jefferson Memorial
Hospital, and with Dr. Glenn Mannheim, neurologist and expert in the
interfaces of neurology and psychology. The Clinic also develops
teaching strategies and multisensory teaching materials based on research in
the neurosciences and on significant clinical advances in the understanding
of the brain's processes applicable to learning.
For more than a quarter-century The Lewis
Clinic has provided a unique kind of comprehensive, multi-disciplinary,
educational testing. The WRAT-3, the Stanford Battery, the
Nelson-Denny Reading Test, or the more extensive Woodcock-Johnson Battery,
are integrated with other neuro-developmental, psycho-educational,
neuro-psychological, peripheral auditory, central auditory, perceptual motor,
and expressive-receptive speech and language testing. Additional tests
assessing short-term, active-working, and long-term memory systems, the
mechanics of language, lateral dominance preferences, echolalia,
directionality of pencil performance, and decoding-encoding ability.
Finally, tests of auditory and visual tracking and sequencing,
dictation, far- and near-point copying, organizational ability, and
visuo-motor/auditory-motor integration along with nationally normed,
standardized tests of oral word recognition, silent and oral reading,
vocabulary, silent and oral reading comprehension, listening comprehension,
and written comprehension.
At the Clinic, test results are scored by hand not using a
"right-wrong" answer grid, rather by analyzing the types of errors
or the possible reasons for them.
Evaluations at The Clinic are extensive and also highly
specific, and provide teachers with direction for a student's educational
needs as well as a useful baseline for the measurement of progress and
continuing needs.
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