Student Success

Student success at RLC 

It is a trademark of the RLC teaching and learning community that we work, always, to ensure the particular needs of each student are thoughtfully and carefully accommodated. This assurance is at the heart of our personalized learning approach. By participating in a student-centred professional community, RLC teachers truly know their students. The positive relationships teachers form with their students, and the dynamic and creative learning cultures they cultivate, ensures unending access and opportunities to express learning for each student.

Director of Student Success
‍John Dinner, the RLC Director of Student Success, is a certified special education teacher with a passion for supporting students that extends through his entire career. He builds and maintains the Individual Student Success Strategies (the ISS is RLC’s equivalent of an IEP) for each student requiring accommodations for particular learning needs and challenges. The Director of Student Success works individually with students to build learning strategies, as well as with teachers to identify and implement effective approaches to teaching and assessment.

Learning Strategies Courses
Learning Strategies Courses that intentionally support students in the development of executive functioning skills, are offered to RLC students in Grades 9 and 10. In general, any student within these grade levels who is supported by an ISS is strongly encouraged to enroll in a Learning Strategies course. Also, the Learning Strategies curriculum is embedded throughout all parts of the Foundation Years Program, ensuring a strong base of skills with which to enter high school.

Supporting students is in our nature
While we ask teachers to accommodate the needs of all students, we do not, as a school, modify programming, maintaining the overall curriculum and consistent expectations and learning outcomes for all students. It is important to note, however, that the nature of learning at RLC ensures extensive support and accommodation for each student. Learning at RLC is student centred, placing a strong emphasis on experience (often in the outdoors), inquiry and creativity. Students are often designers of their own learning and the essential questions driving learning, participating in the planning of experiences, and the creation of assessments and assessment tools.