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Our Mission
- The Legend of the Phoenix
- An Environment of Success
Our Mission:
To recognize, understand and appreciate individualized needs
in students, and to offer alternatives to help create a
non-stressful and productive learning environment where
students may realize continued success and enjoy being
self-fulfilled individuals and valuable members in their
community.
We believe that:
- Behaviour is a method of communicating to the outside world what cannot
be adequately expressed.
- Students who are stressed intrinsically or through their environment
often have a difficult time learning. Frequently, (but not
necessarily) this leads to labels such as a learning
disability.
- Many struggling students are so occupied tending to their own needs to
survive they have little energy to learn. This is often the
case with those individuals who are hyper or hypo sensitive
to factors in their environment, those with
neurodevelopmental delays, or have sensory integration
issues. All people are driven by their internal and basic
intrinsic needs first.
- Where a student’s attention is available to be directed is dependant
upon the amount of energy used to satisfy their primal
survival needs. Only when these needs are met can attention
be directed to focusing, concentrating and learning. This is
the concept that Judith Bluestone from The HANDLE® Institute
International coins “Attentional Priorities”.
- Neuroscience has shown that stressed systems cannot
strengthen since stressed or overwhelmed systems shut down
neurologically. A shut down system is not a reflection of a
lack of motivation; it is the unconscious and instinctive
transfer of the body into the Sympathetic Nervous System
that is involved in the stress or danger ( fight or flight)
response. Some common signs of this state include a change
in pulse and blood pressure, dilated pupils and a change in
muscle tone. While under the control of the Sympathetic
Nervous System, top priority intrinsic needs are tended to.
Therefore, efficient learning cannot be achieved by a
student who is stressed, or possess stressed systems, as
learning does not occur while in a Sympathetic Nervous
System state.
- We believe that if we can recognize, understand and appreciate the
individual needs of our students, we can:
- help to create an environment that is less stressful
- identify and accommodate their needs until we have been
able to identify and strengthen the causal
neurodevelopmental differences
- provide a successful learning environment and a positive
community atmosphere designed for individualized
requirements
- realize an increase in self-esteem and self-fulfillment as
students identify and acknowledge their own growth.
Valerie MacLean, Certified Practitioner and Instructor
implements the HANDLE program at Phoenix, customized to meet the
individual needs of each student / client.
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