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History

The Russell Bede School began as an afternoon tutoring program in 1981. Called the Myers Learning Center after its founder, Helen Myers, it served local students who were having difficulty keeping up with the challenges of the classroom.

Myers, whose father had a learning disability, believed that given the proper environment, children with learning differences could thrive and enjoy the experience of education. She sought to establish a program in which someone like her father, whose name was Russell Bede, could learn.

Pretty quickly, the program outgrew the space Myers had to offer in her own home. So she bought the 1907 Victorian house in which the school is now located, spent two years renovating it to meet state code requirements for an educational institution, and began the process of getting full certification. When the school opened in 1983, she named it after her father.

The idea was to establish a school with nurturing teachers and intimate classroom settings in which students could focus on improving their academic skills.

The method was to identify a child’s strengths and teach to those rather than forcing the child to adapt to a rigid model that clearly didn’t fit. So if a child had strong auditory recognition but had difficulty with visual understanding, for example, she worked out an educational plan that included taped lessons. This way, she found, children gained self-confidence and were able to learn more effectively. From there, she could teach them study skills and educate the parents about how their children learn so that the support could continue into the next school.

More than two decades later, the program has expanded to 18 students in three classes with fully credentialed classroom teachers, physical education, drama and music programs.