Jemicy School

Accreditation: First school in the world accredited byt the International Dyslexia Association; Association of Independent Maryland and DC Schools (AIMS)

Founded: 1973

Organization Affiliation: International Dyslexia Association (IDA); National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS); AIMS

Ages/Grades: 1-12

School Schedule: 7.5

School days in Calendar Year: 174

School Holidays: most national holidays, winter break, spring break

School Size: 380

Classroom Size: ranges from 2 to 12

Student/Teacher Ratio: 4/1

Tuition: $33,900 - $35,500

Curriculum:

college preparatory

Support Services: Highly personalized college counseling; learning specialists on staff; speech and language services

Camp Programs: Yes

After School Programs: Yes

Admissions Deadline: January 15 and then rolling if space is available

Mission Statement:

Jemicy School educates talented and bright students with dyslexia or other related language-based learning differences by addressing both their intellectual strengths and their learning needs. The school utilizes creative, multisensory, and research-based programs and techniques to develop reading, writing, spelling, and organization skills; promote a love of learning, and prepare students for the intellectual and social challenges of college and life.

Philosophy/Belief Statement: Margaret Rawson’s PHILOSOPHY OF JEMICY SCHOOL (written in 1973 and revised by the Board of Trustees in 2004) A school should be designed for its students, their present happy growth, and their soundly based future effectiveness. A school is established as a group in which people are taught or led to learn, but it is as individuals that they learn through experiencing group life and developing unique personal competencies and understanding of their world. Just as, in Aldous Huxley's words "It is no good knowing about the taste of strawberries out of a book," so each student needs to experience for himself the worlds of city and country, of nature and human culture. These become part of him through all his senses, through emotional and spiritual appreciation and responsible involvement in all the world about and within him, and by the active process of the ordered observation, problem solving, and critical thinking which we call intellectual functioning. Each person is born with a distinctive combination of potentialities on which, by the time she comes to school, a unique set of experiences has been at work making her a separate individual, different from all others. At the same time, she is a member of the human family, with certain basic physical, emotional, and spiritual characteristics and needs, which she shares with all of us. It is this that makes society both necessary and possible. A school life that promotes the healthy, vigorous, joyful growth of its students should provide a well planned physical setting and general program. Such dependable security gives a firm foundation and a stable framework within which each student can live a cooperative and rewarding social life while she is developing from dependent childhood into self reliant adolescence and adulthood. But this provides only the background for the major interest of the school, which is the meeting of each student's specific needs and the fostering of his strengths and unique talents. The plan that is best for him is the one that will enable him to grow toward his own potential. For this he needs a richly varied educational experience in physical activity and sports, in a wide variety of creative appreciation of his cultural heritage. She needs careful training, too, in the basic skills that are the tools through whose use she will develop competence and a sense of confidence in achieving her educational objectives. Tools themselves are not the goals of education, but just as it is difficult or impossible to construct a beautiful and satisfying building without a set of well sharpened tools and the skill to use them, so one cannot hope to acquire knowledge, understanding, and vocational competence without mastery of reading, writing, mathematics, and the disciplines imposed by shop, studio, laboratory, and playing field. Students have varied degrees of talent and difficulty in different traits, and so their needs differ. Wholeness of development requires that we know a student's strengths so that we may encourage him to use them well, and know too, the exact nature of his difficulties so that we help him to cope successfully with them, and so gain a well rounded competence as an effective person. To achieve these goals for the school there must be a staff that embodies wholeness of body, mind, and spirit, with a capacity for both loving acceptance and calm firmness. Effective pedagogy requires knowledge and enthusiasm in subject matter, coupled with astute assessment of individual student's needs and capacities and skill in teaching each one in her own style and at her own pace whether individually or in varying groups. Since none of us is all knowing, the planning and operation of the school requires not only teamwork on the campus but consultation with outside experts when needed, cooperation of parents, and most important, a spirit of involvement on the part of the students as they grow toward taking full responsibility for their own behavior and learning. This is education a leading forth toward the full, happy, and effective living we all want for each of our students and for the school community as a whole. This experience of the good life in childhood, with the development of competence and adaptability, is the best preparation we know for meeting the demands of later schooling and of a world of rapid change and complexity. Specific training is obsolete before it is mastered, but intellectual curiosity, skill and learning, and creative flexibility in the face of new problems are dependable resources with which to meet whatever the future may hold of challenge and opportunity. These are the objectives to which the Jemicy School has dedicated itself.  

School History: In the early 1970s, David Malin and Joyce Bilgrave began a summer camp in Baltimore County for children who were dyslexic.  The first year proved to be so successful that parents of the campers urged David and Joyce to establish a school for dyslexic children.  With guidance from educator Margaret Rawson and psychologist Roger Saunders, a Board of Trustees and an Advisory Council were established.  "The School at Jemicy Farm" opened in September 1973 to 37 students and 13 faculty at the J. Jefferson Miller mansion on Park Heights Avenue.  Early classes were held in the kitchen, halls and even the chicken coop!  The program, tailored to meet the needs of the individual student, was based on a multisensory, Orton-Gillingham approach that was infused into the entire program to give students success both in and out of the classroom.

      In the fall of 1975 Jemicy moved to its present location formally The Valley School (no relation to the former Valley Academy in Towson).  The property had a playing field and several buildings, including a gym.  The school facilities expanded in 1981 and again in 1990 when the Taylor White Building was added, providing additional classrooms, tutoring rooms, and facilities for art, shop, music, dance, and the sciences.  A library was added and dedicated to David Malin.  In 1994, Jemicy received a gift of 7 adjoining acres which enabled the school to develop an extensive ropes course and expand the opportunities for future growth.  The Benno and Elayne Hurwitz Building was dedicated in 1998 and features 16 tutoring rooms, a language resource library, and technology lab.  In 1999, the school purchased an additional 4 acres increasing the campus to its present 21 acres and giving Jemicy an enviable facility for its educational programs.  An extensive renovation of the middle school occurred in 2007 providing space for a larger middle school enrollment.

      Strong and creative leadership at the Board level and in the academic administration has been a hallmark of the school.  Taylor White remained Chairman of the Board of Trustees for 23 years providing consistency and oversight for Jemicy’s growth.  He continues to serve as an emeritus Board member and tireless ambassador of the school.

      The school benefitted from strong academic leadership beginning with Jemicy's first co-directors, Joyce Bilgrave and David Malin, and continuing to the present with current Head of School, Ben Shifrin.  Ben has extensive educational experience and is a strong advocate for children with language-based learning differences.  He also serves as Vice President of the International Dyslexia Association, thus extending Jemicy’s opportunities for collaboration nationally and internationally.  From very early in its history, Jemicy School developed a warm, caring environment that fostered academic achievement, strong self-advocacy skills, encouraged diversity and individuality, promoted creativity, and addressed the needs of the whole child.  The school community remains committed to the same attributes.

            Jemicy School responded to increasing demands from the region to provide assistance to students with language-based learning differences who were unable to enroll in the school.  For more than 23 years, the Jemicy Outreach program has extended the services and methods of Jemicy School to provide in-depth training for public, private, and parochial school teachers, offer specialized courses for students and families, and respond to individual requests from school systems.  Since 1991, more than 18,000 teachers and their students from Baltimore City; Baltimore, Montgomery, Harford, Howard, Talbot, Queen Anne’s, Wicomico, and Carroll counties; the states of West Virginia, Alabama, Colorado, and Missouri; and the countries of Kuwait and China have benefitted from workshops and long-term contractual relationships with The Alice A. Koontz Jemicy Outreach Center.
      Jemicy master teachers are trained in the variety of methods or learning philosophies proven successful at the school, including LETRS, Neuhaus, Project Read, Lindamood-Bell, Wilson Language System, and Orton-Gillingham language-teaching methods.
      In the fall of 2002, the community need for schools that addressed the needs of students with dyslexia and language-based learning differences provided the impetus for exploring a merger between the former Valley Academy of Towson, Maryland and Jemicy School.  After an extensive period of due diligence by the Boards of Jemicy and Valley Academy, it was evident that the two schools shared a commitment to serving students with dyslexia and other related language-based learning differences.  In April 2003, after recognizing the significance of their shared core values, the boards of both schools signed an affiliation agreement, effective July 1 of that year.  On July 1, 2004 the schools officially merged under the name Jemicy School, finally realizing the dream of creating the first co-educational, college preparatory, independent school of its kind for students in grades 1 through 12 in the greater Baltimore region.
      In December, 2005, the board purchased 22 acres of land on Garrison Forest Road in Owings Mills, near the Lower and Middle School Campus, for the development of a new upper school campus facility.  In January 2007, the school began the silent phase of a capital campaign to raise funds for the upper school facility, and teacher and financial aid endowments.  During the same period and after a period of study, the administrative and educational teams decided to expand the population in the Middle School in order to provide our students with a more robust co-curricular and social environment.  The Middle School wing on the Lower and Middle School Campus was expanded in the summer of 2007. 
      Jemicy launched a new initiative on the Upper School Campus in the fall of 2007 called the Upper School Prep (USP) program.  USP was specifically designed to address the needs of students in their last year or two of middle school who are applying to Jemicy for the first time.  This program was developed in response to a need in the broader community for targeted intervention in organization, study skills, note-taking, and test-taking preparation, as well as Jemicy’s continued focus on the development of strong reading and writing skills.  Since its inception, the program’s enrollment has been steady and typically ranges from twelve to twenty-four students each year. 
            In the spring of 2009, the Board acquired a new property and buildings for the purpose of relocating the Upper School Campus from Towson to the Owings Mills site, which was adjacent to the 22 acres of land previously purchased.  The Upper School transition team, including trustees, the Head of School, the Assistant Head of School, the Head of the Upper School, the Director of Information Systems, the Facilities Coordinator, and members of the Building and Grounds Committee convened to plan the move from the facilities in Towson to Owings Mills.  The team also solicited input from other key members of the faculty and staff to prepare for the opening of the new facility in the fall of 2009.  The building, originally designed for lower and middle school students, was retrofitted throughout the summer months for use by older students.  It was wired for the extensive technology used by Jemicy upper school students.  The team created a comprehensive, modern upper school environment, including dining area to accommodate lunch periods for all students at one time, a stage, meeting rooms, student lounge/reading room, a full size gymnasium, athletic fields, and outdoor areas for relaxation, congregating, and learning.