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First Edition: February 28th, 2007 (PDF Format)
Reflections
By Jonathan Jones, Executive Director
The mother of fourteen-time Olympic goal medalist Michael Phelps was the banquet speaker at the National Learning Disabilities conference in February. Needless to say, she was as energizing as Michael is electric in a swimming pool. She delighted the group with her stories of Michael’s triumphs and challenges, both in and out of the pool. As many of you know, she is a school principal in the Baltimore, MD area. Her message to teachers in the audience was brutally simplewhat students need most from caregivers is our recognition of their uniqueness and a sincere interest in their success. It is that simple....and that difficult. With all of the pressures, day in and day out, who has time to REALLY get to know each of our students? Each of us realized we must make the time!
Mrs. Phelps’ presentation stirred me to reflect on some of the simple truths I have gained over the years regarding children. The harder I pondered, the more I realized those “truths” can be boilded down to three. I will share one in each of the last three columns I pen as SOAR’s Executive Director.
The first revolves around the idea of “love languages”. Author Gary Chapman proposes the existence of five love languages - Acts of Service, Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, and Physical Touch. A simple and free on-line assessment (http:www.5lovelanguages.com/) helps uncover the love languages of each family member. When my family embarked on the “love language adventure” I thought I had each family member “pegged”. I could not have been more wrong! We started discussing how our love languages “spoke” to each other. Along the way, I realized I was communicating love based on my love languages and not on those of the receiver. My #1 is “words of affirmation” and my son’s #1 is “quality time”. This posed a huge problem for a very busy dad out to save the world one child at a time.
Unfortunately, and fortunately, the solution was quite simple. I needed to slow down just a little and ensure daily / weekly quality one-on-one time with my own son. Oh my, the adventures and misadventures will never be forgotten!
Sometimes, it was a simple afternoon walk throught the woods, tubing down a snowy hillside, enjoying a movie together or Tuesday “guy’s nite” at Pizza Hut. I still smile at some of the life lessons learned at Pizza Hut! Other times, the “quality time” was a little grander. We completed our SCUBA certification together. We climbed 30-foot Jamaican waterfalls together. We sat on deserted Costa Rican beaches in the dead of night waiting for sea turtles to nest. On his 18th birthday, we even went skydiving together.
Our greatest misadventure occurred in the Spring of 2005 when we participated in rodeo school together. He chose bull riding and I chose bareback bronc riding. Was that a mistake! He excelled at the bull riding, but at 48 I was a little too old to be riding broncs. After a trip to the hospital, I realized I needed something a little tamer and joined the bull fighter class. To this day, I have enjoyed nothing more than being the rodeo clown / bull fighter while my son rode bulls the next two summers at the Dubois, Wyoming rodeo. And I have Gary Chapman to thank for all of these adventures.
So, what’s my point? First, make time to learn the love language of each family member. Secondly, honor the love languages once they are discovered. Your life and that of your child / children will forever be blessed for the effort! The adventures and misadventures will never be forgotten- ever! That’s the point. Enjoy the adventure!!
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Philosophy: SOAR believes all individuals identified with learning disabilities (LD) and attention deficit disorder (AD/HD) possess inherent talents and gifts. These abilities can mean incredible success in adulthood once these students negotiate the challenging obstacles of childhood, adolescence, and a traditional education system, usually unable to respond to individual learning styles.
Therefore, the SOAR model is based on two fundamental principles. First, youth with LD and AD/HD flourish when they are encouraged to focus on their strengths in an experiential setting. The second principle acknowledges that success can be generalized by encouraging our students to develop and utilize strategies, enabling them to compensate for those challenging characteristics of LD and AD/HD. To this end, SOAR staff strive to ensure success for each student across a wide range of experiences. Such success, in turn, builds essential self-esteem and self-confidence.
Based on these two foundations, SOAR participants develop problem solving skills, effective communication strategies, increased self-awareness, and social skills. Program activities include a broad base of wilderness adventure experiences that empower students to make healthy choices, learn more about themselves, overcome challenges, and establish relevance from these experiences to other aspects of their life.
SOAR's Specialty Courses are open to SOAR alumni and students with the maturity and experience level to be successful on the course. Acceptance is conditional on the approval of the course director. Most specialty courses are led by one of SOAR's year-round staff including Jonathan Jones, John Willson and Logan Walters.
SOAR’s programs are designed to allow students the opportunity to increase their independence while away from home. Independence is gained through self-motivation and life skills instruction. With this in mind, we involve our students in many decision making processes, such as setting individual goals, developing group guidelines, as well as trip and meal planning. This also comes into consideration when developing SOAR’s communication policy, detailed in our Parent Handbook.
SOAR is dedicated to serving the needs of individuals with learning disabilities (LD) and attention deficit disorder (AD/HD) and is proud to be the finest: