Welcome Warriors!

We serve students who learn differently and need a school that transcends the traditional.

Our Mission

Woodlynde School welcomes and serves students who learn differently and empowers them to become strategic thinkers and self-advocates in a challenging and supportive college preparatory environment.

A School Journey As Unique As Its Students

Every Learner Is Unique

Our K-12, college preparatory program promises just that.

Our K-12, college preparatory program promises just that.

A male and female students smiling as they conduct a classroom science experiment using a skinny test tube and a Bunsen burner.

Not the Exception, but the Rule

Woodlynde’s LD-first approach means your student receives the teaching they need the first time around.

Woodlynde’s LD-first approach means your student receives the teaching they need the first time around.

You won’t find kids being pulled out of electives or missing lunch to get the help they need at Woodlynde because built-in learning supports are in our DNA. They’re not the exception, they’re the rule. When your starting point is teaching to the variability of each student in a classroom, it means you can push every one of those students to the edge of their academic ability, a new frontier in learning.

A Whole Child Approach

We complement our rigorous classroom environment with a vast array of cocurricular experiences.

We complement our rigorous classroom environment with a vast array of cocurricular experiences.

Honoring Diversity

Woodlynde School is committed to fostering, cultivating, and preserving a culture of diversity and inclusion in order that its students and employees achieve their full potential

We believe that everyone’s unique life experiences and background adds valuable perspective to our community and that our community is stronger because of the differences represented by our students, colleagues, and families. We embrace community members of different backgrounds and do not discriminate against employees or students on the basis of race, color, creed, ancestry, national origin, sex, age, religion, or disability.

Is Woodlynde Right For Us?

A wide range of needs and diagnoses are represented in Woodlynde’s K-12 student body.

Almost all our Warriors, however, come to us with a language or math-based learning difference, even if that’s just one of multiple diagnoses or disability classifications. They all tend to benefit from a smaller learning environment.

Students Thrive Here

Bright, college-bound students who struggle with dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, ADHD, ASD Level 1, auditory processing and executive function disorders, anxiety, and sensory processing differences thrive at Woodlynde.

What We Believe

Graphic of a star with firework-like sparkles radiating out from it

Instill
Hope

At Woodlynde, we start from a place of possibility, a place of ‘yes’.

We encourage every member of our community to set their sights on the horizon and offer them the support they need to know the best is yet to come.

A graphic illustration of three nondescript human figures with their arms around each other lined up, representing friendship and belonging.

Foster Belonging

In our community, students, families, colleagues, and alumni don’t just fit in, they’re valued and celebrated in their uniqueness.

At Woodlynde, we extend compassion generously because we realize that every person is more than the sum of their parts.

Cultivate Confidence

It’s our courage to persevere as we strive to reach our greatest potential that makes us who we are at Woodlynde.

We cheer those in our orbit on and ask them to push to the edge of their abilities because we know it’s there that you discover the power of trusting in yourself.

Nourish Growth

At Woodlynde, we believe in unbounded potential.

We think and behave with intentionality because we know that people are not born who they are, they become who they are meant to be.

Graphic icon of the Warrior mascot head with helmet

FIND YOUR PATH

Woodlynde students walk the PATH of the Warrior by focusing on perseverance, accountability, trustworthiness, and humility.

The best way to know whether Woodlynde is right for your student?

SUBMIT AN INQUIRY

We're excited to work with you to see if Woodlynde is the most-right school for your student!

Assessment Center

Our passion is helping families navigate learning differences whether they are a fit for Woodlynde or not.

Reach out to Woodlynde’s School Psychologist Dr. Jay Tarnoff today.He offers neuropsychological and psychoeducational assessments through The Center for Literacy and Learning at Woodlynde School.

Jay Tarnoff

School Psychologist

LEARN ABOUT ASSESSMENTs at woodlynde

WHAT ARe common DIAGNOSES AND DISABILITIES?

A History of Serving Students

Woodlynde School emerged from the determined hearts and minds of LD educators and parents affiliated with the Booth School, which closed its doors in 1976.

Seeing the unmet needs of young people with learning differences and driven by a desire to destigmatize those differences, Gordon A. Hughes, Janet and Robert M. Hewes, III, and Arthur M. Tofani, Jr. established Woodlynde on the grounds of a former Episcopal diocesan estate in Gulph Mills known as ‘Denbigh’. The school opened with approximately 40 students and grew under the leadership of the first Head of School Jack Hughes.

How did we get here today?

How did we get here today?

John ‘Hench’ Murray succeeded Hughes in 1981 and introduced a number of instructional programs and approaches that established Woodlynde as a leader in differentiated, learning differences instruction. The school flourished and moved to a new home on the site of the former Strafford Elementary School in 1984. In the 1990s, Murray and Board Chair David P. Montgomery drove significant improvements to the campus, including the construction of a new Lower School wing and an additional cafeteria.

Under the leadership of heads Jack Rogers (1995 - 2004) and John ‘Hench’ Murray, who returned to helm the school from 2005 - 2009, Woodlynde continued to grow thanks to a longstanding relationship with Wilson Language Training and new forays into service learning and an ever-expanding slate of cocurricular, arts, and athletics offerings.

In 2009, Christopher Fulco was named head of school. During his tenure, bolstered by Board Chairs Jane Mullany and Maryann O’Conor, Fulco led a dramatic expansion of Woodlynde’s academic support, college guidance, and student life programs. The school’s largest capital campaign–The Campaign for Woodlynde–launched under Fulco and O’Conor’s guidance in the mid-2010s.

The $12 million campus transformation, which gave birth to six new classrooms, four new offices, a media and music room, and the Schmader Student Commons drew to a successful close in 2020 under the leadership of Amy L. Clemons, who stepped into the role of head of school in 2019, and Board Chair Sarah Houston.

During her five year tenure, Clemons led Woodlynde through the COVID-19 pandemic while introducing the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework, data-driven approaches to student progress monitoring, and a structured social-emotional learning program called Connections. Her efforts reflected a passion for understanding the evolution of Woodlynde School, the students who claim it as their own, and their changing needs in the classroom and beyond. Clemons’ fortitude led Woodlynde to embrace students with an ASD Level 1 diagnosis publicly for the first time in 2024, continuing a long tradition of destigmatizing difference that stretches back to our founding.

Between 2020 and 2024, Clemons built a number of hands-on, multisensory learning spaces–a cinematography studio, a ceramics studio, and an outdoor classroom and learning garden–and laid the groundwork for the creation of the Woodlynde School Innovation Lab and The Center for Literacy and Learning at Woodlynde School, both of which will open in Fall 2024. With the introduction of an Assessment Center offering neuropsychological and psychoeducational testing, Clemons drove Woodlynde ever closer to the visionary goal set forth during her tenure of exponentially increasing the number of lives meaningfully impacted by Woodlynde’s approach to teaching and learning.

Gregory Martin, Woodlynde School’s sixth head, began his tenure on July 1, 2024.

What Woodlynde Means For Your Student

A Student's Day at Woodlynde

Get a sample of what a typical day at Woodlynde would look like and how we continually address student needs every day.