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How can we go about helping students find their life niches?
How are we to mobilize their individual strengths and minimize their
deficiencies so they may attain sufficient success and gratification? How can
we enable students to understand and help themselves as they contend with their
personal unique patterns of mind wiring? How can we ensure that they are
understood and appropriately managed by parents and teachers? How can we share
and apply all that has been learned about learning and differences in learning
to achieve these aims?
These were the rock hard questions posed at a 1993 meeting in Chapel Hill,
North Carolina. The seminar was attended by a vigorous assemblage of national
leaders, many of whom in their careers had spawned important ideas, products,
and programs that they had succeeded in spreading throughout America. The
Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation in Morristown, New Jersey sponsored the event in
the hope that these leaders could help have a broad positive impact on children
who struggle in school.
The Foundation had supported the startup of the Schools Attuned Program®, a
national program designed to help classroom teachers deal with the challenge of
neurodevelopmental variation among their students. The approach is one in which
teachers are provided with the knowledge, skills, and tools to observe and
describe their students and to derive appropriate techniques for maximizing the
effectiveness of individual learners. It includes a strong emphasis on
uncovering and managing strengths as well as a plan to ensure that all students
are learning about learning while they are learning.
Toward the end of the historical 1993 meeting, Mr. Charles Schwab suggested
that we found an institute comprised of the best business minds collaborating
with academic scholars in the field to take these ideas “to scale” nationally.
Over the next 2 years, fueled by significant support, a non-profit institute
was born and named All Kinds of Minds. A visionary and highly talented Board of
Trustees was convened. Mr. Schwab agreed to chair the Board of Trustees, and
All Kinds of Minds came into being in 1995.
In our first decade, our work with students, their families, clinicians and
educators was built on the neurodevelopmental framework developed by our
co-founder and renowned learning expert, Dr. Mel Levine. Throughout the years,
the Schools Attuned Program has also benefited from the input of experts on
professional development for teachers. Regional training sites were established
throughout the United States and Europe. Hosts of highly productive,
knowledgeable, and innovative faculty members have continued to perfect,
update, and deliver the Schools Attuned Program and the All Kinds of Minds
message.
Funding for All Kinds of Minds has been nothing less than extraordinary. The
Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation provided a 10 million dollar matching
grant. The Oak Foundation of Geneva, Switzerland provided a 5 million dollar
matching grant. Numerous other individuals, private foundations and
philanthropists have donated generously to support the activities of the
Institute.
Today, Mary-Dean Barringer is the Chief Executive Officer of All Kinds of
Minds. Mary-Dean has the responsibility for the expansion and development of
the Institute’s neurodevelopmental model for schools. Her efforts leading the
Schools Attuned Program have resulted in more than 41,000 K–12 educators
receiving and implementing research-based training about learning difficulties.
Prior to her tenure at All Kinds of Minds, Mary-Dean served for more than a
decade as Vice President of Outreach and Mobilization for the National Board
for Professional Teaching Standards where she led teams of educators to embrace
change and innovation. As a teacher for thirteen years, she received eight
grants to design and implement innovative teaching programs and received
numerous awards for teaching, including the 1985 Council for Exceptional
Children’s National Teacher of the Year award.
Supported by generous donors and the input of experts in education, it is
abundantly clear that All Kinds of Minds is having a potent constructive impact
on education. We continue to refine our programs and their focus on learners,
teachers, and others in the school community. With a goal of facilitating and
sustaining school change by helping teachers understand learning, we impact the
lives and work of millions of students and educators.
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