Our Teachers

Each faculty member is dedicated to our mission, philosophy, our school, and most of all dedicated to our students. Our faculty have shown year after year that they are committed to the children they teach. Our faculty also understands that regardless of a school’s setting, facilities, and programs, it is a human institution. The relationships between GLA teachers and students are essential to the overall success of each child. Great Lakes Academy also maintains small class sizes, allowing for those valuable connections to be made each day.

Great Lakes Academy Faculty members are all subject to, and must meet, the following requirements:

  • Maintain a caring and nurturing classroom environment
  • Be an appropriate role model both in and out of the classroom
  • Attend Regular Faculty Meetings
  • Complete 30 hours, each year, of continued training and seminars that are comprised of a mix of content-based professional development classes and classes that are oriented toward Learning Differences, diagnoses, and child development

Each faculty member will foster the student’s growth by accomplishing the following goals:

  • Model appropriate actions and behaviors
  • Teach social skills throughout each day and praise desired behaviors
  • Look for teachable moments out of the classroom to reinforce social skills
  • Create interactive and hands-on assignments, projects, and activities
  • Teach organizational skills and assist students in keeping a daily assignment book
  • Develop engaging field trips that relate to the curriculum
  • Utilize current technologies to motivate students to learn
  • Maintain an up-to-date knowledge base of each student’s diagnoses, learning differences, social/emotional/academic strengths and weaknesses, accommodations, and academic history by becoming intimately familiar with each student’s psycho-educational testing and/or FIE (Full Educational Evaluation) on file in our administrative offices.