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Learning Specialist Billie Yarbrough enjoys an individualized lesson with one of her students.
Trinity’s approach to learning differences By Billie Yarbrough, Learning Team Specialist
Trinity’s Learning Team is dedicated to partnering with parents and teachers to find the best way to approach our students’ learning differences, providing another layer of individualized support to help them become academically independent and confident learners. This means that our students with a learning difference, such as dyslexia (reading), dysgraphia (writing), dyscalculia (math), or processing challenges, are taught differently, oftentimes in a different learning environment, one-on-one or in small groups. We celebrate each student’s individual abilities and successes, utilize tried-and-true remediation techniques, and equip students with learning strategies that they can use for the rest of their lives. We continually evaluate our students who are in the Learning Team program and partner with parents and teachers to choose the best educational path for them. We are equipped to remediate students with mild to moderate learning differences and counsel parents and teachers on whether a student should remain at Trinity for the entirety of his or her elementary journey or matriculate to a school focused on a specific
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learning difference. Early detection and remediation are vital to a child’s future, which makes the work of the Learning Team so important. As far back as I can remember, and I joined the Trinity community in 1989, we had a Learning Team. Back when we had three learning divisions—Early Learning (age two– Kindergarten), Primary Learning (Pre-First–Third Grade), and Upper Learning (Fourth–Sixth Grade)—at our previous location on Northside Parkway, now the Atlanta Girls’ School, there was a Learning Team specialist for each one. Back then, the learning specialists would administer reading assessments, see students who required either academic or emotional support, recommend student evaluations and testing to teachers and parents, and would provide base classroom teachers with information on how best to support students with attention deficit disorder (ADD) and/or learning differences. I began my career at Trinity as a First Grade associate teacher, became a lead teacher my second year, and spent 15 years in the First-Grade classroom. It was during the construction of our current building, back in 2000 or 2001, that there was an effort to expand the learning specialist role as well as the number of specialists who would work with our students. During this time, the Board of Trustees as well as the then-head of school wanted to give our Kindergarten and First-Grade program an expanded purpose, providing more specialized environments to
