Beacon College Tour
Beacon College Tour
This week State Representative Jimmie T. Smith asked if I would accompany him to visit and tour Beacon College in Leesburg, Florida, a college exclusively for students with learning disabilities. BC is the only accredited college offering Bachelor of Arts and Associate of Arts degrees exclusively for students with, dyslexia, ADHD, gifted LD and/or other learning disabilities (LD).
Our tour guide was a young sophomore student named Katie. She was an outstanding hostess, showing us the school’s facilities and introducing us to several of the faculty. Katie, like all the students at BC, has a learning disability. Katie matter-of-factly shared with us that she has dyslexia and ADHD. She also shared with us that one of the first writing assignments each BC student is given is to provide a research paper on their specific learning disability, how it affects their life, and how they are coping with their disability. Among the many benefits of this assignment is the self-awareness and self-advocacy that the student learns about them self.
One of the first areas we visited was the Writing Lab which is a computer lab above the schools media center. This lab provides computer writing tools to aid the student. One of the tools is a Microsoft Word add-on ‘word predictor’ which helps a student as they write. As an example if a word starts by typing “en” you might then get a word list that pops up with words such as “encourage”, “enough” and “encore”. If the list included the word that you were looking for, you would simply click on the word you’d like. This is a small but powerful program for someone with spelling challenges. Another tool in the writing lab that has been used by BC students for many years is a book reader. Even if a textbook is not digitalized for reading this device scans, and then reads, the page to the students. These are the types of everyday tools that can tremendously aid an LD person to become successful.
Katie brought us through the mentors’ offices. Every student at BC is assigned an individual mentor and psychological counselor. Katie showed us several classrooms and explained that the class sizes are small with the average class size being about twelve students and no larger than fifteen students.
Next Katie brought us to the Math Department where we met one of the Math professors that shared with us about a new program that they are using called, ALEKS. This is an assessment and learning system that provides individual instruction in a variety of course areas. Available from McGraw-Hill over the web, ALEKS helps students learn and strengthen the fundamental concepts and problem-solving skills that are needed to succeed in their individual course of study.
The campus is in historical old down town Leesburg and many of the BC buildings are historical buildings and former store fronts. We visited the student dining hall which was a former large restaurant located next to the School’s media center. It was more like going to your favorite home restaurant than a student dining hall. We visited a typical student apartment (yes, not a dorm as we were told by the students). They were well designed and even included a washer and dryer in each apartment for the students.
We then met with Dr. John Hutchinson, Interim President for Beacon College, along with several of his executive staff and faculty. Dr. Hutchinson shared that BC has a 75% graduation rate. He explained that BC does not have the traditional SAT or ACT admission score requirements, but rather the college requires a standard high school diploma or GED, and recent psych-educational evaluation documents. BC has about 130 students from over 30 states and countries.
It was hard for this “old dyslexic kid” not to be a little bit jealous about not having the opportunity to attend a college like BC that is specifically designed to accommodate LD students. What was evident at each area that we visited at BC was that the administration, faculty and staff were all focused on “the whole student package” and how they could assist each student to be successful. Rep. Smith and I each shared with the College President and his team why we are so invested in better assisting learning challenged students and why it is so personally important to the Representative and me. We shared our own personal learning challenges, for me as a severe dyslexic and Rep. Smith as a frustrated 9th grade high school dropout, who later received his G.E.D.
If you have, or know of, an LD student in high school I would encourage them to visit Beacon College. It may just change their life.
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