Join us for an interview with Sam Semlitz, MAT, our Director of Learning Support, K-12. Sam started at Quad Prep in 2017 as a reading specialist and has played a pivotal role in creating and shaping the Learning Support program at Quad Prep today.

Q: What drew you to Quad Prep? 

A: Part of it is that I’m 2e and openly dyslexic. I have my own strengths and areas of growth, so I can be empathetic toward the students. I realized I wanted to do something with psychology, but I was good at teaching, so I decided to go into special education.

Q: What is learning support?

A: Learning support is flexible and difficult to define because it is tailored to the unique needs of each student. At its core, it helps students who are behind grade level, struggle with the core curriculum, or have learning disabilities that are majorly impacting their access to the curriculum. In Lower School, the focus is primarily reading and math, whereas in the Upper School it is Writing and Reading Comprehension. The key is understanding when and why a student needs support.

While many struggles can be addressed within the classroom, thanks to our teachers' training and their ability to adapt instruction, some students still require additional support. For example, reading fluency issues alone may not qualify a student for learning support, but difficulties with understanding concepts or processing information often signal a need for more targeted intervention. Learning support focuses on identifying gaps and providing specific strategies to bridge them. This may include specialized instruction for students with learning disabilities, like dyslexia, or the use of assistive technology and more focused classroom environments for others.

Q: How has the learning support program at Quad Prep evolved?

A: We started this program in my third year here. In a traditional classroom, you can have a single class of 30 students all with different goals. So we had to think, how does it work for Quad Prep’s model? Most of our kids struggle in writing, but if everyone struggles with writing, this isn’t a learning support issue. We do less writing intervention now because we switched our curriculum and made writing and reading more accessible across the school. In Lower School, we primarily do decoding and encoding, which is reading and spelling. We also do multi-sensory math and have started paralleling our systems between campuses. 

Q: Integration is essential to Quad Prep’s model. How does learning support integrate with other programs, services, and supports?

A: We’re an academic department, but we work closely with clinicians. One student needed help with articulation, so the speech-language pathologists (SLPs) taught me how to discriminate between sounds so I could integrate that into my sessions to help with spelling. The SLPs also saw how I coached writing, so when they push into ELA classes, they use similar prompts. Not only was it beneficial for the student, but it benefited both staff members. There’s always someone at Quad Prep who can help in a specific area of expertise, which is great.

Q: Could you tell us about learning support-informed classrooms and why they’re so impactful?

A: Last year, we had two classrooms who partnered with the learning support team to implement strategies that the whole class could benefit from. The growth that students in those rooms made was tremendous. Kids were willing to take more risks and use tools and strategies they weren't willing to use before because they felt less self-conscious. The frequency of learning support sessions also decreased.

Q: How have you seen learning support transform the learning experiences of our students?

A: I used a timed puzzle with one of the students I work with, and he kept beating me! So I said, “You're really good at that!” I don't think he'd ever heard that he was really good at something or that there were career options for him based on his strengths. Students may not realize that their neurodivergence is a strength now, but those strengths really translate later on. We help students understand their strengths, especially when academics are hard for them.

Q: What kinds of assistive technology does the learning support team use?

A: There’s low and high tech. Low tech doesn’t use computers. We use a slant board which helps position the hand correctly. High tech uses computers and speech-to-text, text-to-speech, multi-sensory typing programs, and more.

We’re looking at how AI can be used in a way that's not doing your work for you but instead supporting your work. Many students who struggle in writing lower the complexity or shorten the length of their writing assignments because it’s tedious or they don't know how to spell something. Text prediction gives them the support they need to expand on topics, confront the challenges of spelling, and find success at a high academic level.

Q: Why is learning support important to you and to twice-exceptional students?

A: Before coming to Quad Prep, many students have been in different settings in which they haven’t felt supported or successful. [It’s amazing] having students grow so quickly and feel supported. I struggled to learn at school and learning specialists were very influential to me, so I want to have that impact on other students.