2025/26 Year Recipient
From Emma’s mom:
We have a nine-year-old daughter named Emma, who is attending Easton Country Day School for her second year this upcoming September. Emma is a sweet and intelligent girl, and most importantly possesses a love for learning.
Emma struggles with ADHD, specifically with her executive functioning. She also contends with a sensory processing disorder, which makes loud and chaotic environments very distressing for Emma. Public school for Emma can best be described as a nightmare. The staff was unequipped to provide Emma with the appropriate learning environment that matched her profile, often leaving her isolated in a room by herself and ostracized from the other kids in her grade. We had three different Psychologists evaluate Emma, all concluding that Emma has severe ADHD. Two Psychologists noticed the sensory processing disorder, the other, which came highly recommended by the public school, did not. The final straw was the public school administrator trying to label our sweet and intelligent (young then) seven-year-old as “emotionally disturbed”, as a way to force us to send Emma to a behavioral-focused Special Education school. Once we knew the public school had failed our child and tried to labeling her in an unethical manner, we knew it was time to move on. We visited multiple schools, both special education and private, and we found Suellen at Easton Country Day School. After meeting with Suellen one time and for approximately one hour, we had a very strong feeling that ECDS is a place where Emma could thrive. Suellen had to convince us to drop her off for a half day, without all of the guard rails the public school put in place for our daughter. We were hesitant, but trusted Suellen and the process. Emma stayed at Easton Country Day School for a half day in spring of 2024 and she came out, smiling, glowing, and had written an entire page story, something she had never done in public school. We enrolled Emma soon after.
Emma began school at Easton Country Day School in the fall of 2024. The staff at ECDS is incredible. Mr. Hocker and Mrs. Hocker, along with the rest of Emma’s teachers worked really hard with her and gave her some space to be herself. It was a challenging transition at first to get Emma to unlearn all the bad learned behaviors reinforced to her by the public school, but by the spring of 2025 Emma was an entirely different child. She is thriving in academics by being in Math and Literature courses two grades above her level. She has made friends and loves participating in social extracurricular activities, such as being in the play. Instead of coming home stressed, anxious, angry, or sad, we pick her up and she is smiling ear to ear telling us how she had a great day. We can feel her confidence and self-esteem growing. We can’t thank the staff at ECDS enough. In just one year they got Emma back on track to being a happy child who looks forward to her education every day.
2024/25 Year Recipient
From Sebastian’s mom:
Our son Sebastian is an energetic, fun, loving kid who would proudly point to his head and say he had a “big brain” with confidence when he figured out how to make something work. With his infinite amount of energy he is always on the move, even as a toddler we would say that he has two speeds “on or sleep.”
He loves to spend time with his family, including his two fury siblings, cousins, grandma and Papa, whom he idolizes. He looks forward to his annual family trip to visit his Aunt’s house, who lives in western New York and our annual cousins camping weekend to explore a new area of New England.
Sebastian has a passion for collecting and appreciating the uniqueness of rocks, sticks and seashells. He has a natural strength and skill for jiujitsu. He also loves to build forts out of blankets and furniture, plays chess and loves to have stories read to him. He has a unique way of exploring the world and looks at ways to improve it, like picking up trash on hikes or making someone laugh or giving them a hug. When our neighbor was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He went door to door to sell purple ribbons so every time he drove up and down our street he knew his neighbors loved and supported him. He raised over $1,400 in donations and presented it to him and his family just months before he passed.
Sebastian was very enthusiastic about starting kindergarten and making new friends. Early on he began to struggle academically. The traditional institutional “cookie cutter” methods of education did not work for him. As the year progressed struggles continued despite his dedication. He started to become insecure and overwhelmed memorizing sight words, counting past 13, and trying to read aloud. During conferences we were always told he was making progress, but would never be given a direct answer as to how he rated amongst his “peers”. We felt there must be something hindering his learning and advocated for a speech evaluation. We felt there might be a language-based learning issue since he pronounced certain sounds inaccurately like bizert for dessert.
First grade, again was approached with optimism, but quickly Sebastian realized that academically he was behind his peers. We saw an active decline in his academic confidence and an increase in anxiety and poor self-image. Sebastian now started to refer to himself as “dummy.” He often at times would come home from school crying. Frequently, we were told he was making progress, or it was too soon to tell if a new intervention was working and that he didn’t show any signs of anxiety in the classroom.
When we would ask him how his day was, he would reply “fine”. Eventually he shared with me that was his coined response because he didn’t want to talk about it. It was not “fine” and he didn’t want to make us sad. By the end of the year, we were able to successfully have the school test him for a learning disability. At this time, we expressed Sebastian has developed low self-esteem and was assured with his diagnosis of ADHD, the special education plan they created would give both him and us the skills to help support his academic challenges and allow him to succeed. Outside of school, I changed my work schedule so I could be home with him when he got off the bus, we decided to enlist a Wilson trained tutor, a special education reading expert and start him in OT to mimic some of the services. We also decided to explore medication to help him focus in his large classroom setting with the hopes of catching him up academically to grade level. We expressed concern with the constant pull outs he would now have, and were told not to worry, kids adjust and those who are not pulled out often wish they were. This was not our case at all – Sebastian often remarked to us that he would return to his classroom feeling like he missed something and that he felt lost. When we shared his feelings with his teacher, we were told her perception was different. She shared that Sebastian would return to class quietly and sit in a chair separately and observe his peers finish their current lesson – one that was beyond his current capabilities. To help with his self-esteem, we enrolled him in jiujitsu. Our hope was that it could help with focus and self-discipline.
During second grade, Sebastian’s self-esteem issues became very apparent. He became very quiet and pensive daily on his rides to school. He frequently asked to be home schooled and no longer wanted to attend public school. I can remember sitting in fall conference and having the special education teacher telling us she felt he would catch up to grade level “by 4th or 5th grade.” We began to question whether this school was the right fit for our son. After the winter conference our decision was easy to make, he had made no academic progress and was over a grade level behind. We enrolled him in an ADHD therapy group to help him express his emotions and learn coping skills. It allowed us to better support his emotional and sensory needs but identified to us that we needed to find a more appropriate school to help him academically.
We began our journey to look for a school that would holistically look at our child and meet his emotional, social and academic needs. This search brought us to Easton Country Day School (ECDS). From the second we met with Mrs. Inwood she was able to see him for the exceptional individual he is. She shared with us the uniqueness ECDS had to offer: a unique, warm, kind, supportive family environment, smaller classroom sizes, flexible academic classes with trained specialized educators that are able to teach at skill level and need. We knew right then, this was where Sebastian needed to be and immediately began the application process for him to start his 3rd grade year.