Texas school allows kids with disabilities to flourish

From Fox News in Houston:

On the edge of Stafford, Texas, within a plain Jane piece of office space, a human transformation is underway that's making a run at remarkable.

It is here that a collection of self-styled outcasts gather daily, bona fide refugees from hostile campuses, both public and private. Inside the group's study room it takes little time to learn what the kids of Focus Academy have in common.

Lets just call them "quirky" - kids who possess the social peculiarities that come with conditions like Asperger's, Tourette and attention deficit.

While the disorders differ from student to student, the cruelty endured from past classmates was largely the same.

"It made me feel hated," recalls a Focus student named Julian. "It seemed to me like I was a misfit, people made it seem that way," adds Julian's classmate Mary.

It was for these often friendless teens and tweens that Focus Academy was formed, a haven, so to speak, from the hurt.

"They weren't making it in the real world, they could make it through school sometimes, but there was something missing," explains Focus founder and director Jacquelyn Tomlinson.

What was missing was what many believe kids like these need most - an emphasis on human interaction and the creation, often from scratch, of the skills to carry it off.

"You can't just tell them they are doing the wrong thing and not give them what to do instead. They actually have to learn the skill," Tomlinson adds.

To relay those skills, Focus Academy has created a culture of hyper-inclusion.

"You see day by day the course of their life change," says Richard Kelly, a Focus teacher who spends each day guiding the academy's eight middle and high school members.

Goals are established, reinforced and constantly discussed. Because these kids often learn differently, academic studies are self-paced and on-line.

There is no homework, but a student can't leave the building until all daily assignments are complete.

"The idea is that when we go to our jobs as adults we stay until we get the job done. It is the same kind of model for these kids," says Tomlinson.

So far it's working. One student has advanced six science grade levels in just four months, another knocked out two full math courses in just a semester.

A year at focus academy costs $15,000 and for most families that's a huge amount of cash, but Focus parent Karen Jaggers calls it the best money she's ever spent. To explain why Jaggers recalls an immensely painful incident on the campus of the public school her son Dalton formerly attended.

"I came across him in school with four kids calling him a retard. 'You are a retard ! You're a retard ! Aren't you a retard?' They didn't know I was his mom," Jaggers explains.

Jaggers says for the first time in his life, Dalton has friends, his classmates at Focus.

"A place they can have friends. As simple as that sounds, for them it's life changing. They've never had a place like that," says Kelly.

Along with the relationships comes an immense degree of comfort and an emerging self-respect.

"We are just unique and we enjoy being unique, and we don't try to fit into a mold and we all have our fair share of crazy ideas," says a Focus student named Chloe.

"Even if you don't fit in by nature, you'll fit in here," adds her close friend Mary.

"It's probably the best school you'll ever find," insists another Focus student named David.

An infectious and hopeful attitude which makes a room filled with quirky former outcasts a place to thrive instead of merely survive.