What is Microschooling?
Microschooling is a small group of students that come together and learn what’s important to them. Parents take an active part in their child’s education and work collaboratively with teachers and tutors to proactively meet children’s educational needs. Educational days are individual crafted to meet family needs, rather than attending “bell to bell” at a public day school. Curricula choices are carefully selected and implemented, ensuring every child reaches their full potential.
Individualized Educational Services has been microschooling since we started! We know it works! Our families share that their children want to come to our programming!
Why Consider IES?
We specialize in helping students with learning differences succeed! Rather than fight the school district for the teaching your child deserves, you can just ask for it! IES brings the best of our BRAIN strategies to every lesson! Every lesson is built for success from the ground up, ensuring success! There’s no need to wait to hold an IEP and hope the school has the staff to offer pull out help. Microschooling ensures the learning needs are met every time.
Our neuro-diverse students love coming to work with us! It starts with the simple things: calm lighting, lines of sight to exits, small groups… we can keep going on! IES proudly uses the SCERTS model of support for all of our students. This strategy allows us to find the supports that each child needs rather than penalize misbehavior. Clear schedules, TASC cards, and a focus on vocabulary help every student develop communication and emotional regulation. SCERTS lets the team find the “little things” that will bring big successes in academics!
Microschooling lets every child learn in the way that’s best for them. Comprehension comes first, and its not just audio books. Small groups lets teachers and parents pick the teaching strategies that work for them. We’ve proudly helped students that need language supports access core reading novels through graphic novels. Comprehension goes up. Discussion goes up. Learning goes up. Enjoyment goes up. We set the seeds for life long learning!
Student athletes love microschooling! We know recruiters are shifting away from scouting from just high school games and are seeking out clubs. But, clubs are more demanding. Microschooling lets student athletes build a better balance of their needs. Academics can be met in half the time, giving them the time and space to prioritize their training. Timing is also flexible, letting them practice when it is best for them, their coach, and their team.
Many students are also managing mental health needs. We know how hard it is to get proper support from medical professionals, let alone public schools. Microschooling lets students work in small groups to prevent burn out with integrated supports to support recovery. We can help students and their families choose coping skills to best match the underlying needs and build them into the academic day. Microschooling gives your entire family more time and space to manage the big picture: support with titration when prescriptions change, scheduling around appointments, and a safe place to just be, even with big emotions.
What Does it Look Like?
We’re built to fit your needs! Many students join us 2, 4, or 5 days for a half day or whole day. We rotate through rooms and take movement breaks on a regular schedule.
We also support students in the evening in small groups or one on one.
Students and their families deliberately pick activities for the day, including academics, physical activity / training, social groups, recreation and more. Students may also spend time working or taking college classes to help them reach their goals, academic or other wise!
Do you have a F.A.Q.?
Families generally spend less than $2500 a month on our academic classes. Our class rates are inclusive, so you do not have to worry about enrollment fees, tech fees, textbooks, or other things that seem to take the fun out of learning. We are an approved vendor for many charter schools in the area, and accept enrichment funding that can cover most of the fees!
We pride ourselves on our upfront pricing. You can see for yourself here.
We’re here for the community! Please reach out to us to set up special group rates (pods), check for scholarship opportunities, and more. Each child only gets one opportunity for their K-12 education, and we want to make it count!
We offer all the regular subjects (Math, English, Science), and more engaging classes like The History of Technology. Our science classes included lab activities, too! We’re hoping to find teachers and tutors that are willing to teach languages other than English in office, so families can minimize their traveling.
The only class we really can’t teach is physical education- we’re in a professional building that doesn’t have a field / playground. That said, we still integrate movement activities throughout the day. Looking into the future, we hope to utilize the bike path for some fun outings!
First, they take our classes with high academic expectations with the supports they need to succeed!
Many of our students are enrolled in Public Charter Schools. This allows their classes to receive the “A-G” designation for CSU and UC schools. The charter school will send the transcript to the schools you want them to.
As students become more successful, many families consider dual enrollment options, including taking classes at Santa Barbara City College. This comes with exceptional benefits: a one semester class counts as a whole year high school class and a college transcript is earned. Families that plan well can expect their high schooler to graduate from high school and community college at the same time. Wow!
Most of our current and past students plan on working through four years of high school and enrolling in a community college. Why is this so cool? No SAT prep. No college essays. No stress. That’s a win!
We start the last week of August and end the first week of June. You can check out our calendar here. We have breaks scheduled, because we should all “sharpen the saw” and just in case we need to make up a class. If a school district takes a break, we do, too. Best of all, we take our days off in pairs. If there’s a Monday holiday, our Tuesday classes get a break. It’s only fair!
Summer learning loss is real, and summer programming is offered.
Your child’s IEP and psycho-educational report have wonderful information that can help teachers and tutors better design and implement learning supports! With microschooling, you’ll find that many of the learning needs are supported within the classes themselves, and your child can thrive without the need for extra intervention! We will walk through the IEP with you to understand the present levels of performance page, goals, and accommodations to set up the school year your child!
That said, when parents choose to privately place their child in another program, many of the “DIS” services are lost. These can be the big ones, like speech, OT, PT, and even a child’s aide. Services that are parallel, like speech, can be accessed through a child’s health insurance, and continue to meet their needs. School districts will provide you and your microschooling staff with consultation most of the time. Unless…
Unless you know that your child is not making progress on their goals and not receiving educational benefit. You can get your child’s school to pay for microschooling, but you must give ten days notice. You should have an advocate or lawyer help you with this. (We can give advice, but don’t want to create a conflict of interest.)
First and foremost, high interest materials! We know that many of our kids with ASD, ADHD, and all the other letters are exceptionally smart and cannot be bored to tears. We hold them to high standards and expect them to learn and grow in all areas.
Our classes are designed to reduce cognitive load as much as possible. It can be simple as using a computer over paper and pencil to using hands-on activities for math and science. We also help to manage language load and language processing, including using graphic novels, to support comprehension and access to age / grade level material. Writing tasks include examples and frame sentences to bring success across grade levels.
Wrap around academics can be provided, too. These are activities that can help strengthen a processing area, such as vision or hearing, in order to make the academics easier. We also have wonderful community partners to help remediate basic skills.
We use the SCERTS program to carefully structure the enviorment for success! We support students through many difficulties with care and respect, including being a safe place to process feelings with support. We do not yet have mental health providers on staff, but can direct you to some wonderful providers. Many children have the same basic needs, and we integrate as much pro-active regulatory activities during the day so one child does not feel different than the rest.
Every child has their own set of strengths and areas of support. Please reach out to us to see how we can support your child’s needs.
No, we’re not. But that’s a good thing, as we have more control over what we do!
We can help families locate a public charter school or a district independent study program. There are also private school satellite programs that can help manage records and develop transcripts. Families wanting the up most freedoms can file their own private school affidavit with the California Department of education.
Finding your school is perhaps the most important part of this journey… compulsory attendance is enforceable! While this is a small, easy problem to work through, it carries the most legal weight. We can help you through all of the options so you can take charge of your family’s educational needs.