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Open House Publicity
We are very excited that our recent open house attracted journalists from several different news organizations including Central Florida’s WFTV Channel 9 News and the Winter Park Maitland Observer weekly news magazine. The channel 9 video clip is forthcoming on this blog, and Matt Morrison’s WPM Observer article covering Independent Education published on September 17, 2009 appears below.
Students Leave the Classroom to Graduate Faster
What if you could go to high school, even receive college credit, all from the comfort of your own home?
Students at Winter Park’s Independent Education Learning Center are doing just that, many of them problem-learners who have struggled to focus in a normal classroom environment.
Working with CompuHigh Florida, which was recently granted approval by the Department of Education to educate middle school and high school students year-round, Winter Park’s program is a budding system looking to expand.
Owner and Director Dan Calleja, 34, began his career teaching American history at Stonewall Jackson Middle School in Orlando but found that he was spending more time disciplining his students than teaching them.
He fell out of public education and into tutoring, when a friend came to him looking for help with her son who was struggling with school.
“I told them I’d try to educate him without having to send him to high school,” Calleja said. “He wouldn’t have to deal with some of the temptations he’s given into and gotten in trouble with.”
It was in the online universe that Calleja realized the variety of education options that were open to students who may have trouble with more traditional methods.
“I thought, ‘There’s a way for kids to not have to go to high school but still get their diplomas,’” he said.
At the learning center, students take their high school or college-level courses online, while receiving support and advice from instructors working one-on-one, or their fellow students. The campus is small, with only a handful of students enrolled. The learning center purchases textbooks for the students and helps them formulate a schedule to help them get their coursework done.
Students work with one another and with the instructors in a closely monitored educational environment that’s designed to give structure where it may be lacking.
Most students have seen an improvement of several letter grades in their classes, Calleja said, going from failing to receiving A’s or B’s.
Working through high school and getting into trouble in his classes, Jon Beardsley, now 22, came to Calleja when he was just starting out with four students.
“I was a smart kid, I just didn’t have any organization,” he said.
At the learning center Beardsley said he found the support he needed, culminating with Calleja driving him to Winter Park High School to take his SAT. Beardsley is now a math major at UCF looking to graduate this year.
“That was a lot better for me than being in high school,” Beardsley said.
Eric Sclar, 24, went to two other schools up North, but he was unhappy. When he moved to Florida, a lot of his credits didn’t transfer to UCF, where he’s in the College of Business.
“I hit a roadblock with it, but Dan really helped me with it, tutored me through the math and now I have about a year, year and a half left at UCF,” Sclar said.
The learning center, located at 1294 Palmetto Ave., can be found online at www.IndependentEduOrlando.com .
Posted by: editor on September 22, 2009