Before a student is enrolled in Writing and Reading Lab, the approval of the English department head is required. Students enrolled must value this special learning environment, which is designed for cooperative, mutually supportive work. Thus, referrals made to address behavioral problems or to sort students for a variety of reasons other than those stated below will not be approved. For students currently mainstreamed, referral is made by the current English teacher, and will be based upon observed and persistent deficiency in the student's fundamental literacy skills. The student's reading is laborious, difficult, and slow, even when reading materials of personal interest.
Comprehension is achieved only with significant work.
The student's writing shows profound and recurring deficiencies in correctness, problems with sentence sense, spelling, and other fundamentals of written expression. For students currently receiving instruction through special services, a request for referral is made only after consultation with the English department head and appropriate special services personnel. Whether students enter the work force or eventually go on to some form of additional schooling after graduation, their success will depend to a great extent on their ability to understand and use the English language. To live as mature human beings and functioning members of society, students need to be able to communicate with others, and that means using language. Plays, stories, letters, essays, interviews, books, magazines, newspapers, movies, television shows, and yes, even application forms, are all different kinds of texts.