| The most gratifying part of teaching at the Joy House Academy is watching students who have struggled in school for years suddenly begin achieving. A common weakness for most students is math. Maybe they believe they are dumb, or maybe they believe their ADD prevents their success, or maybe they have been “helped” so much in school that they have been cheated out of a necessary foundation. Regardless, they have the opportunity here to discover that they have been believing a lie, and when they make that discovery, success comes.
One of our graduates, Kylie, came to the Joy House having been labeled by her school a special education student and told that she would never be able to do high school level math. As a result, her parents believed that she would need to use notes to take any math tests. However, as Kylie began work in Algebra I (without notes), her test grades were generally A’s and B’s. I know that Kylie profited from our low student-teacher ratio that allowed her to get instruction, support, and clarification when she needed them. But I was interested in her perspective. One day when we were working together, I said, “You’re doing really well in Algebra here. Why do you think you’re doing so much better here than you were in school?” | 
