Today we’d like to introduce you to Mary McPherson
Hi Mary, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I have been in education for almost 30 years with the majority of that time dedicated to independent school education in Atlanta.
Prior to founding Courage Schools, I worked at another independent school in Atlanta for 21 years. Eleven of those years as Director of Academic Technology and the last ten years as Elementary School principal. During my time in education, I had several roles that broadened my understanding of various learning needs and the ways that they can present in academic settings. As Elementary School principal, I not only guided parents and teachers in ways to challenge students but also how to support students who were experiencing struggles in specific classes. I found that more students were being diagnosed with language based learning differences that didn’t always equate to a dyslexia diagnosis or they were diagnosed with dyslexia but had co-occurring diagnoses of a processing disorder, developmental language disorder, or general language disorder. These students are very capable and would respond well to a remediation based program if given the opportunity. Atlanta is blessed with excellent schools designed for dyslexic learners but not all are designed to support additional language based needs.
After being a part of a team that developed a dyslexia pull out program at an Atlanta area independent school, I transitioned away during COVID, took a year to develop the academic model for Courage Schools and along with Micky Irwin, opened Courage’s doors in August of 2021.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
If you don’t hit obstacles when embarking on a leap of faith, then you aren’t doing something right or your aren’t being honest with yourself. The biggest obstacle was opening a school during a pandemic. In hindsight, it tuned our to be a great idea since so many children were diagnosed during the pandemic and most of the special schools were at capacity. Securing an appropriate facility and being able to sell your vision to others was not easy feat, especially when all you have is your reputation to get the doors open to start serving children.
The first three months of school were the hardest as we navigated onboarding all new faculty, staff, parents, and students. Many of the students who started the school with me were coming off of virtual learning and we had to re-teach them how to be in a school setting with other students.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Courage Schools?
Courage Schools is a K-8th grade remediation based school for children with language based learning differences such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, developmental language disorder, and general language disorder. We are a language immersion program that utilizes multiple structured literacy approaches as well as the support of a speech and language pathology team to provide additional language support once a week that focuses on language comprehension and orthographic mapping. We are fortunate to work closely with Stacey Levy and Associates for our speech and language support program. In addition to speech and language support, we also work with Pathways to Independence to incorporate occupational therapy into our school program. Students attend a Movement class twice a week that is taught by an OT and PE teacher.
We are different from other specialty schools in Atlanta because we are considered a language immersion model that focuses on remediation and we serve a more global language need. Students don’t have to be diagnosed with dyslexia to attend Courage even though many of our students are dyslexic learners. We also place a heavy emphasis on STEAM since many of our students have clear strengths in this area and philosophically we feel it is just as important to pay attention to a child’s strengths as it is areas of support.
I am most proud of how the program has been built to provide supports into the school day. Due to the layers of need for many of our students, many still see an SLP or OT outside of school for 1:1 support and we work to build this into their school day as well so when school is over, they can go home or to an outside activity that isn’t school or academic based. In addition, I love the flexibility and nimbleness of our teachers in how they respond to the needs of our students. Students are placed in literacy and math cohorts based on their instructional needs and the teachers have the autonomy to respond to the needs of the students they teach. Our teachers are cross trained in several structured literacy approaches because we don’t believe “one size fits all.”
In four years of operation, we have outplaced 34 students who have continued there journeys in both independent schools as well as public schools. We are so incredibly proud of their growth and success!
How do you think about luck?
I don’t necessarily believe in luck – good or bad. I think doors open and close and it is up to you to choose how you are going to respond to the opening and closing of doors. When a door closed for me in 2020, I took the opportunity to peek inside a door that was cracked open earlier in my career and was then fully opened in 2021.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.courageschools.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/courageschools/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CourageSchools
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@courageschools
