Supporting conductive education

By Kelli Comer

Rising Star Academy offers students a safe space with a highly trained staff which understand the individual needs of every physically disabled student enrolled. The focus is always on building on students’ abilities and never stifling their hopes and dreams because of a disability.

This fall, Rising Star Academy launches its annual fundraising campaign to enrich the lives of children with motor disabilities. Donations make accessibility come to fruition for the students, including subsidizing student tuition, expanding facilities and services and building up the rehab and conductive education departments.

Rising Star Academy uses the extraordinary approach of conductive education for its students. Motor skills such as sitting, standing and walking lead to life skills like eating, dressing, toileting and playing.

Conductive education is a unified system of cognitive, physical, emotional and ethical education that was first developed by Professor Andras Peto in Budapest, Hungary. It was designed specifically for children with movement disorders of a neurological origin. In this system, children are conducted to fully engage themselves in learning useful, age-appropriate actions aiming for normalization of the students.

“The success and longevity of Rising Star Academy has been made possible because of friends, family and the business community who together have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to make the dream of so many years ago a reality,” Executive Director Erin Potter-DeCarlo says. “This generosity has brought hope to so many children and their families—with this hope comes students with physical disabilities able to make their way in a world that is not clearly defined or designed for them.”

Rising Star Academy is located at 8121 Deepwood Boulevard in Mentor. For more information and to donate, visit GoRisingStar.org. Rising Star Academy is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, and all donations are tax deductible.