Saint Mary's School

Whether dealing with behavior issues or academic ones, the key to a successful solution is early intervention. This requires skilled and attentive eyes in the classroom and on the playground, to identify potential problems, discern patterns and assess environments. St. Mary’s School is dedicated to helping students succeed by providing them with the proper support systems to do so.
Principal Angela Pohlen has a Master’s Degree in Inclusive Education from Loyola Marymount University and has a background in Behavior Intervention Case Management.

Student Success Team (SST)

The Student Success Team is a pro-gram that was put into place to help teachers, parents and specialists work together to help individual students maximize their success in school. Whether a child needs behavior sup-port, accommodations for special needs, remediation or acceleration, this program helps parents and educators to identify goals and strategize an action plan and timeline for achieving them.
Since the SST Program was put into place in 2010, several students continue to benefit from this systematic and collaborative approach to their education.

Lunch Bunches

We often work very hard in schools, pouring over helping students to succeed academically, that their social success is often overlooked. Unfortunately however, students only learn best where they feel safe and happy. There-fore, St. Mary’s takes early intervention
very seriously where it pertains to how children interact together.
When teachers, administrators, parents—or even the students them-selves—identify problems interacting in the classroom or on the playground, a Lunch Bunch may be established to give the students a forum to express their concerns in a safe and positive environment. Lunch bunches are run and mediated by teachers or administrators, and the object is to encourage positive socialization. Everything from role-playing to behavior strategies are discussed in these sessions. Students agree to be positive, honest and accountability is ensured through regular meetings. The result is a pro-active approach to positive socialization in order to mitigate bullying and aggression and pro-mote a friendly, cooperative and respectful culture.

What the kids and parents are saying: