The TLC Difference

The Learning Center features the South Bay Area’s only integrated Orton-Gillingham learning program for children with dyslexia. This means that TLC students are integrated with general education children for most of the school day. In The Learning Center, children receive the specialized learning support they need, while also partaking in the rich, stimulating educational programs enjoyed by general education students at Almaden Country Day School.

In the The Learning Center, TLC students take their core classes (reading, writing, and math). The rest of the day, they join with their general education classmates in the school’s extensive enrichment curriculum – studying hands-on science, art, music, theater arts, and P.E. in the elementary grades, for example, or choosing from more than 50 exciting elective classes in the middle school.

TLC students also spend time with peers from general education homeroom classes at lunch and recess and participating together in overnight field trip adventures, in our competitive speech and debate program, in no-cut after-school athletic teams, at middle school socials, and in school clubs. Alongside all the ACDS students in their grade levels, TLC students socialize, make friends within and outside The Learning Center, and participate in our festive all-school family events like Food Truck Friday, Pumpkin Carving and the Thanksgiving Feast.

Our integrated learning program means that TLC students are ACDS Cougars first, and TLC students second. This is one of numerous ways we minimize the stigma children sometimes feel about receiving specialized instruction.

We are proud of this innovative integrated model and in the South Bay Area, it is currently only available at Almaden Country Day School.

The Learning Center is a member of the International Dyslexia Association and the Orton-Gillingham Academy.