On any given day, whether students at her Overland Park school are working on math, getting creative in art class or cuddling with therapy dogs, Jane Curran hopes that the end result is the same — that they feel safe, and that they have hope.
That’s how she describes the mission of Accelerated Schools of Overland Park. The nonprofit private school aims to offer an adaptive education for students who, for various reasons, have trouble in traditional classrooms.
For more than 45 years, she’s been at the helm of that goal — first as a teacher there, before becoming the school’s director in 1995. It’s a role that Curran said she considers “more of a mission” than a job.
Accelerated Schools has been in Overland Park since 1996
The school is accredited for grades fourth through 12th, though Curran said most of the kids who attend are sixth through 12th graders.
Classes at the school tend to stay small — usually seven students per class.
Curran said the reasons for a student’s enrollment at Accelerated Schools of Overland Park can vary. Sometimes it’s due to bullying at their school or having undergone a family-related trauma. Other times, it’s students who live with neurodevelopmental challenges like autism.
“Some kids can go to any school and they’ll be fine, but that’s not true for all kids,” she said. “It doesn’t really matter why they’re here. It’s just that once they are here, our goal is to try to figure out what is causing them to have difficulty in a traditional school setting, and then what can we do to help them develop the skills that are going to allow them to be successful.”
In addition to the school’s academic curriculum, the school also offers support services for its students, such as counseling and therapy dog visits.
While some students ultimately graduate from Accelerated Schools of Overland Park, she said, others spend a year or two there before returning to their school district if they’re able.
“We want to get them ready for what the next step in their life is going to be,” Curran said, “whether they’re going to stay here and graduate from high school, or they’re going to be here for several years with the goal of moving back to a more traditional setting.”
Fostering a confident environment
The core of what she and her team at Accelerated Schools of Overland Park do, Curran said, is helping form positive relationships between students and education.
Sometimes students might begin to associate fear with their school setting, she said, if they’re victims of bullying or have a hard time keeping up with their peers.
That’s why her goal is to create a school environment that students can walk into with a sense of hope and security — where they can believe they’ll succeed, despite the challenges they’ve faced up to that point.
“We want to give them hope that their life can be better,” Curran said. “If they feel hopeful, they try harder.”
“More of a mission of a job”
As both a teacher and an administrator, Curran said it’s not just the kids facing challenges that she sees as her responsibility to help. Oftentimes, she said, the parents watching their kids going through hard times need help too.
“With a lot of kids that have been through traumatic times or having issues, part of helping the child is helping the parent,” she said. “As a parent, we all have hopes and dreams for our kids, and that doesn’t always mesh with who our kid is. So getting everyone on the same page so that we can all celebrate their accomplishments and their successes, no matter how big or small they are — that’s when you appreciate those ‘Aha’ moments.”
Ellen Portnoy knows firsthand what that’s like. When her son, Michael Portnoy, was in the eighth grade, he faced a struggle of his own.
After being faced with ongoing bullying at his middle school in the Blue Valley School District, Michael stopped wanting to go to school anymore out of fear, Portnoy said. So she turned to Curran, knowing that she’d helped others at Accelerated Schools of Overland Park.
“When I first met her, I was a mother in crisis,” she said. “She gave me hope that I could find an answer.”
Her son went on to spend his freshman and sophomore year at Accelerated Schools, making it onto the school’s honor roll. Even after Michael’s return to the Blue Valley School District, Portnoy said her son kept in touch with Curran.
“Mike was able to learn to feel safe in school again, and he ended up becoming a really good student,” Portnoy said. “When (students) come here, they do find a safe place.”
Her son is not the only one. After her son worked with Curran and his other teachers and moved on from the school, Portnoy stuck around to work there herself — undertaking tasks like facilitating fundraisers, planning field trips, and arranging for speakers to come talk to students. During her time there, she later saw her friends’ children find comfort at ASOP.
Many of them, she said, eventually went on to earn university degrees. Others found success by landing jobs after graduating.
Finding the sense of victory in those achievements, big or small, is what Curran said her work is really for. Her mission (and that of her fellow educators at the school) is not about transforming any student into somebody else who has never struggled or will never struggle again, she said.
It’s more about showing students that they can succeed as they are.
“For me, this job is more of a mission than a job,” she said. “I’m not going to make them a different person. I can’t rewire how their brain works. But you can help them to better understand themselves, what’s realistic, what they need to work on, strategies, coping, all of those kinds of things, so that you can appreciate all the little accomplishments.”
More Helping Hands: This volunteer helps keep the wheels turning at Deanna Rose Children’s Farmstead
