(LifeSiteNews) — If you are the parent of a child with learning challenges or disabilities, you may be pleasantly surprised to learn that one of the most effective special education programs is accessible to families all over the United States.
Secret Garden Education Pathways, a “one-stop shop” for Catholics and non-Catholics alike seeking special education and literacy support, works to help students read and learn independently instead of merely providing “band-aid” fixes. The program takes research-based, tried and true strategies, and implements them within the “framework of the Catholic understanding of the human person,” as founder Margaret Walsh explained to LifeSiteNews.
The power of the program’s method is remarkable. Walsh shared that she had a pilot study of the program conducted at a high school and within two months saw a leap of 2.2 grade levels of reading comprehension for students.
“We’ve had students with issues holding them back from college and then hear they’re attending college and getting A’s and B’s in college,” she told LifeSiteNews.
The classical Catholic underpinnings of the program are what give it an edge. This Catholic understanding of the mind, as articulated, for example, by St. Thomas Aquinas, assists in identifying “which part of the thought process is not working correctly,” such as perception or association, so that this can be targeted specifically. “We’ve worked with students to help with their processing speed and memory,” she said.
Secret Garden Education Pathways offers one-on-one remediation sessions for students as well as consultation sessions with teachers and homeschooling parents, and individual and group remediation sessions for private schools, all virtually.
Parents and educators interested in deepening their understanding of children’s literacy will also find a helpful aid in A Catholic Approach to Literacy for Struggling Students, a book recently published by Walsh. It explains the “most important pieces to building the skills needed for literacy acquisition,” so that educators are better equipped to teach these skills.
To put it simply, “When you know what use an intervention is for, you can use that intervention effectively,” Walsh explained. “It helps educators understand the whole loop. Because they need to see the whole person, the ultimate end of knowledge, to see where those specific strategies fit within the framework.”
The biggest inspiration for the book came when Walsh started working in special education and began to see that effective remediation strategies were “the ones that aligned with Aristotle’s and Aquinas’ understanding of the human person and the connection to the soul.”
“Anytime I saw an effective research-based intervention, it had a place within the framework,” said Walsh, referring to the traditional Catholic understanding of the person. “Even when I spoke to educators at conferences, no one there had connected those dots either. That was a huge ‘aha’ moment where I thought, ‘Wow, this knowledge that Aristotle and Aquinas gave us still holds true.’”
Walsh hopes to see more Catholic schools work to strengthen children’s literacy skills especially in cases of students with learning disabilities instead of treating the disabilities as fixed and lifelong.
“It would be amazing for private Catholic schools to be the leaders in education in this way and not just follow in lockstep with what public schools are doing. I think they would see tremendous growth,” Walsh said.
She went on to explain the greater impact that students’ literacy skills, or lack thereof, has on the broader culture.
“A lot of students are struggling with comprehension and are not building out this rich experience of reading and interacting with classic tales of virtue and vice. And so that’s having an effect on our culture right now,” Walsh said.
“Students are losing that. The only culture that many students are seeing right now is TikTok and video games, violent video games. They’re exposed to the corruption within our society,” Walsh continued.
Because students lack exposure to books about, for example, “times in the past when there was political corruption, or corruption within the Church,” they’re not “able to steer themselves as well as they could or participate in building a culture that is healthy for people,” Walsh noted.
She stressed that fostering students’ greater exposure to classic literature is critical to building a better culture in the next generation.
Walsh also highlighted the fact that her program will not only help children to learn better but to pray better. This is because one of the faculties the program helps to improve is the imagination, which is not only a common impediment to reading comprehension but is “one of the first entry points for meditative prayer.”
The ultimate goal parents should have for their children is to help them get to Heaven, Walsh pointed out, and prayer is a major part of that.
“Sometimes there are natural limitations as to how much a student can come to know God on an academic level, through the Bible and catechism questions. But there is no limitation as to how much God can reveal to a child directly” through prayer, Walsh said. “We can see that through the life of St. Joseph Cupertino who couldn’t memorize anything except Chapter 1 of John. He responded to the grace on a spiritual level.”
Walsh went on to explain how her understanding of learning has helped to shed light on why the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) is so important for the formation of children.
Walsh stressed that God “uses our senses” to help point us to “heavenly heights,” and that this is exactly what the TLM does. In fact, it is designed so that “every single component” helps lift the mind to God.
“The music is appropriate for the worship of God. The architecture, at least until recently, has those soaring roofs that draw the eye up. The priest has his back to you, truly mediating on your behalf as a priest and bringing your prayers to the altar… every single physical aspect has a reason and a significance … the reverence with which you see people attending Holy Communion. You see something big is happening here. All these external things point towards God.”
Mass should have an “external validation that Christ is present,” and this is even more needed for children, and especially for children with learning disabilities who “may not be able to understand everything going on in Mass” but who will be able to pick up on the significance of concrete external signs.
“Find the most reverent Mass you can,” Walsh advised. She also stressed the importance of parents’ example to their children.
“Children are looking towards adults to figure out, ‘How do I behave in this situation?’ And so if adults are just going up to receive communion lackadaisically, or going up to receive in the hand, or they’re wearing jeans and a polo shirt to Mass, even if the adults understand the Real Presence is there, their children, who are still coming to learn that, are not going to recognize it as easily,” Walsh noted.
Learn more about Secret Garden Educational Pathways at https://www.secretgardenep.com/
Check out Walsh’s new book, A Catholic Approach to Literacy for Struggling Students, here.