Our Mission
Provide each child with the academic, social-emotional and life skill resources they need to keep future doors open for high school and higher education they choose.
Our Story
Jennifer Larson was tired of watching her child fall through the cracks and believed there was a better way, so she founded My City School. 15 years later, we’re still going strong!
Program Foundations
Our program is built on the work of influential educational researchers who stress the importance of focusing on the whole child. We are committed to seeing every student as a multifaceted individual within our community.
Benefits of Peer Mentoring
Students flourish when they are immersed in a supportive learning environment with high expectations and peer support.
Wheels of Engagement
We have a very unique math class which helps student develop a deep understanding of math and sets them up for success for years to come.
FAQs
What is special about the teaching methods My City School uses to unlock each student’s learning potential?The teaching methods used at MCS are unique because they are derived from remediation techniques. While students are learning content, teachers are also helping them to practice more challenging skills such as verbal expression, visual-processing, and organization. This allows students to strengthen weaker skills throughout the school day using a curriculum designed to leverage their strengths while highlighting opportunities for improvement. This immersive experience allows students to make more significant gains than they would in a remediation outside of the classroom.
Our students learn through multiple modalities including:
Project-based, experiential learning that prioritizes curiosity and engagement
Engineering and design challenges that develop problem-solving and innovation
Data collection and analysis to build evidence-based reasoning
Collaborative discussions that deepen understanding and develop respect for other perspectives
Real-world fieldwork leveraging Bay Area institutions like the Exploratorium and California Academy of Sciences
In order to effectively deliver the curriculum and keep their teaching methods current, our teachers receive yearly professional development. The trainings are specific to the current students and provide teachers a chance to discuss the supports are needed in math and reading. These two topics are critical for success across the curriculum so all content teachers attend the trainings.
With all of the support at the school, will my child require additional support outside of school?Although remediation techniques are used in the classroom, this does not replace the need for one-to-one instruction for all students. We determine the need for additional support by considering the child’s academic goals, the number of years in the program, and the impact it would have on their experience at MCS.
Students with slower processing speed, working memory, and/or attention challenges will be more likely to require additional services.
MCS will make recommendations to outside practitioners, and we also offer several in-house options:
After School HW Support
Tutoring/Remediation
Summer Bridge Program
Transition to HS + IEP
Student and parent transition
Classroom readiness assessments
The services listed above are not included with tuition. You do not need to enroll at MCS to receive these services.
What is the difference between tutoring and remediation?
Tutoring and remediation are both valuable but serve different purposes.
Tutoring tends to be focused on subject specific content and common study skills. This is ideal for students who have trouble keep pace with content during the school day but do not have underlying processing challenges.
Remediation is often an intensive intervention, delivered by a specialist. They are trained in programs designed to target specific processing skills to close a pre-existing gap. Ideally, remediation is a short-term intervention that helps change how students are processing information and include individualized strategies for students to use in class for long term success.
How does My City School’s curriculum prepare students to transition to high school and college?
We celebrate students’ strengths and embrace how they approach learning, but we don’t stop there. We systematically strengthen weaker skills to develop flexible and organized ways of thinking. At MCS, students with learning differences discover they can outperform everyone’s expectations and later thrive in gen ed classes and accelerated programs.
My City School maintains high expectations of our student while helping them to become successful. Grade level material is offered in accessible formats as students are developing in the first two years. By their final year, we hold students to a high level of academic rigor so they are more than prepared to attend high school and college. Our integrated STEAM curriculum has been developed over the last 11 years specifically to support students with academic potential and complex learning differences. We know that learning isn’t just about academics - students need to feel motivated to learn and inspired by their success!