Kids In Transition, or “KIT”, is an outreach program offered through Black Bear Academy, created to support a student’s success as they make the transition between the preschool and elementary academic settings, larger class sizes and greater ratios between students and staff.
The KIT program views transition as a team process versus a one-time event. We acknowledge the importance of building strong partnerships between educators and institutions in the academic arena and we desire to build strong, mutually beneficial relationships. Our hope is that these partnerships can facilitate opportunities for the continuing education and mentorship of staff and to facilitate a comprehensive understanding of the child and their individual needs. We hope to help accomplish this with open communication about supportive strategies and classroom modifications that work and benefit not only Black Bear alumni but each child, each educator, each school, each program, in each community. Through a variety of continuing education activities, classroom observations, ongoing communication and mentoring, our partnership will help meet the needs of each child, their families, teachers, and external service providers. This helps to ensure continuity of care, fosters progress and supports all involved.
Black Bear Academy is a unique program designed to support each child’s individual developmental and neurological maturation from birth through kindergarten. The program is designed to optimize developmental readiness for future developmental, academic, and social milestones by improving language skills, increasing core vocabulary, and facilitating healthy neurological maturation. We have three in-house programs: we offer a Therapeutic Program, our Academic Program for typically developing students and our Language Enrichment program for the Lil’ Guys beginning at 18 months. We design our programs around each child’s individual needs and provide a stimulating, multi-modal, learning environment without pre-set limits on what’s “possible”.
KIT Mission Statement:
To support the understanding of the individual needs of every child in a way that will facilitate effective teams, optimal growth, development, learning and ultimately, success, regardless of the academic settings and challenges.
We are . . .Speech-Language Pathologists, Occupational Therapists, Special Educators, Therapeutic Enrichment, Administrators, Early childhood Educators and Academic Teachers.
We have… a unique understanding of children as individuals who develop in unique ways as they learn and mature.
We have… become experts at understanding their individual learning styles, and ways to optimize their ability to learn in a classroom setting.
We will… help our educational partners to know our students, individually, and we will use this to our advantage to support them as they pursue teaching excellence for each student in their new academic contexts.
We will . . .support and assist educators to understand the global considerations surrounding a child’s learning style and/or learning differences.
We will…support our Partnership Programs to better understand the academic challenges inherent in the classroom and offer strategies and modifications which will lead to greater success.
We will…offer staffing solutions, whether short-term or longer term, that will allow for “Kids in Transition” to adjust to their new school, their new classroom, their new teacher, in a manner that takes into account their history, their strengths and their challenges.
We will…provide Educators and Administrators with information and training that will lead to greater success and community team building.
We will…provide our Partnership Programs with the essential tools necessary to modify, revise, and enhance the classroom environment, the learning experience, the presentation of information in ways that can address learning differences.
We are Black Bear Academy.
We are… growing, learning, succeeding!
info1718@blackbearacademy.com
koglesbee@blackbearacademy.com
Katie Oglesbee, M.S., CCC-SLP Director of Therapeutic Programs
Release of Information Form
KIT Services 2016-2017
