October 10, 2025

By Amy Jolly, Head of School

A high-quality junior boarding school offers many advantages for the academic, athletic, artistic, and social development of middle school students, but there are specific, powerful reasons why boarding is a transformative experience for students with dyslexia:

1. Specialized Instruction: Students benefit strongly from individualized or small-group instruction, Orton-Gillingham tutorials, and explicit, multisensory teaching strategies. This targeted approach helps students make measurable academic gains; faster than in public or traditional day schools. This is particularly important because it is not uncommon for bright dyslexic students to be diagnosed relatively late in their educational journeys, or for it to take a long time to obtain appropriate resources within a public school setting. Both factors cause students to end up in the 4th, 5th, or 6th grade with delayed literacy, and/or cause students to be frustrated, anxious, or disinterested in school. Middle school represents a critical time to acquire the adaptive skills necessary for success in high school and beyond. At Applewild, our 24/7 boarding program offers an immersive educational experience tailored to the unique learning profiles of students with dyslexia. Within a supportive and structured community, students are encouraged to build confidence, develop their strengths, and receive individualized support in areas of need. This holistic, around-the-clock approach ensures continuity, consistency, and a deeper engagement with both academic and personal growth.

2. Integrated Support Throughout the Whole Day: At boarding school, learning doesn't stop at 3 p.m. - and neither does our staff. We support students with dyslexia in all settings, not just language arts. Our After-School Arts and Academics Program provides our students with study halls, executive functioning classes, teacher check-ins, art and music classes, and other academic and creative outlets. At Applewild, our students are not “pulled away” from their favorite activities to receive necessary services. Parents often must augment their public school’s program through after-school tutoring, with tutors who may not know your child - this is time-consuming, and exhausting. While living on campus as part of the boarding program means no extra hours in the car, it also means that every minute can be spent learning, playing and connecting. Living with a faculty that supports your child in and out of the classroom allows your child to learn with educators they trust.

3. Small Community Size & Individual Attention: In addition to offering low student-to-teacher ratios, because we live together, teachers form deep relationships and understand each student’s learning profile. When taken together, all of this helps dyslexic students feel seen and supported; building both competence and confidence.

4. Focus on Confidence, Advocacy & Life Skills: There is often an emotional impact of dyslexia, and students can struggle with self-esteem, frustration, people-pleasing, and masking. While Applewild serves both dyslexic and neurotypical students, we intentionally set a safe, accepting environment where everyone is working on something. Since our program ends in the 9th grade, all leadership opportunities in our community go to middle school students. The rhythm of boarding school life is full of structured routines that build executive function, independence, and resilience.
5. Immersive Environment for Growth & Belonging: Because we build entire days for students here, they find a natural rhythm without needing to bounce from activity to activity outside of school. Students live, learn, and socialize together; they build lasting friendships, and they are part of a community that values them as a whole person. This sense of belonging and 24/7 support can be transformative for a dyslexic learner.

Families may choose between 5-day or 7-day residential programs, and those who choose the five-day option retrieve their children on Friday evening and return them by late afternoon on Sundays. With either option, when a student is home, parents can relax and simply enjoy family time. Applewild School’s boarding program is available for students in grades four through nine, and our Foundations program is a powerful school-within-a-school offering Language-Based classrooms accompanied by Orton-Gillingham structured tutorials. Our students profoundly benefit from a structured, sequential, and research-based curriculum that is prescribed to the individual student’s needs. Our Foundations classrooms have eight or fewer students, allowing each child to get the academic support they need while fully integrating into the traditional program for arts, music, clubs, all-school meetings, sports, and dining. This combination of high-structure and high-nurture allows our Foundations students to flourish. For more information about the Foundations program, click here.