Arrowsmith Program
| Arrowsmith School | |
|---|---|
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| Address | |
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245 St. Clair Avenue West Toronto, Ontario, M4V 1R3 Canada |
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| Coordinates | 43°41′08″N 79°24′20″W / 43.6856°N 79.4056°WCoordinates: 43°41′08″N 79°24′20″W / 43.6856°N 79.4056°W |
| Information | |
| School type | Private, Co-educational day school for children with specific learning disabilities |
| Founded | 1980 |
| Principal | Barbara Arrowsmith Young |
| Grades | 1 – 12 |
| Language | English |
| Website | arrowsmithschool |
The Arrowsmith School is a private school in Toronto, Ontario, for children in Grades 1 to 12 with learning disabilities (also referred to as "specific learning difficulties"). The original Arrowsmith School was founded in Toronto in 1980 by Barbara Arrowsmith Young. A second location was opened in May 2005 in Peterborough, Ontario. The Eaton Arrowsmith School, which is modelled on the Toronto school and founded by Howard Eaton, was opened in 2005 in Vancouver, British Columbia with two further branches established in Canada and one in the United States between 2009 and 2014.
The school's methodology, known as the Arrowsmith Program, was founded by Arrowsmith Young in 1978 from exercises that she had begun devising for herself in 1977 and which she has said enabled her to overcome her own severe learning difficulties. Her own struggle with learning disability and the rationale for her program are described in her 2012 book The Woman Who Changed Her Brain. According to Arrowsmith Young, her methodology is based on research into the principle of neuroplasticity, which suggests that the brain is dynamic and constantly rewiring itself. The program has been incorporated into other public and private schools in Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, but has drawn skepticism and criticism from several cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists.
Barbara Arrowsmith Young and her then-husband, Joshua Cohen founded the original Toronto school in 1980 to teach learning disabled children using the program and exercises that Arrowsmith Young had begun devising for herself in 1978 and which she claimed enabled her to overcome her own severe learning difficulties. The original school was housed in a rented building on Yorkville Ave. According to Arrowsmith Young's autobiographical account in her 2012 book, The Woman Who Changed Her Brain, she used her middle name for the school in honor of her paternal grandmother (born Louie May Arrowsmith in 1883), who as a young girl had been one of the pioneer settlers of Creston, British Columbia. The Toronto school gradually expanded, and in 1991 she and Cohen decided to open a second school in Brooklyn, New York and wind down the Toronto school. However, by 1994 the New York school had folded, and the marriage of Arrowsmith Young and Cohen had ended. She returned to Toronto and re-opened the school there, this time in a rented building on Yonge St.
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