A Chance To Grow (ACTG), a nonprofit agency based in northeast Minneapolis, was established in 1982 as a parent self-help group for families who refused to accept the limitations of their brain-injured children.  Bob and Kathy DeBoer, the co-founders and co-directors of ACTG, teamed with two physical therapists from Philadelphia, Art Sandler and Sandy Brown, to spearhead an intense training program for their brain-injured daughter that was based on the theory that healthy brain cells can learn to compensate for damaged ones.  It involved a number of challenging physical and mental exercises that were designed to improve visual, auditory, and tactile functions.  Years later, the DeBoers and Dr. Lyelle Palmer, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Special Education and former Director of Accelerated Learning at Winona State University, established the S.M.A.R.T. program (see below), which includes many of Sandler and Brown’s original activities.  It is based on, and continues to incorporate, the latest brain and child development research.

S.M.A.R.T. (formerly called Boost-Up) was first offered as a summer program in 1984.   Three years later, A Chance To Grow collaborated with the Minneapolis Public Schools on a four-year project to compare the impact of S.M.A.R.T. to traditional transitional kindergarten, a program that was failing to meet the school district’s first grade readiness requirements.  The project had one set of classes spend 93 hours in S.M.A.R.T. each year, and another set of classes stick to the regular curriculum.  After four years, the study showed that S.M.A.R.T. students, who read in the 82nd to 89th percentile of entering first graders, maintained their reading gains through second grade, while more than half of the control students, who also had met district requirements for entering first grade, did not maintain their reading gains and quickly fell behind.

In 1992, the DeBoers expanded their services by opening New Visions Academy (NVA), Minnesota’s 11th charter school, where it was shown that students who complete at least 30 minutes of activities per day, or 80 hours per year, make annual reading gains of one year and several months.  The success of the S.M.A.R.T. program, and data collected in the school, led to the founding of the Minnesota Learning Resource Center (MLRC) in 1999.  Funding was approved by the state legislature to establish it as ACTG’s teacher-training institute to replicate S.M.A.R.T. and other ACTG interventions in schools across the state. 

Today, the MLRC hosts workshops and mentors educators in the agency’s interventions that extend across the state and nation.  Its team of professionals, who have a wealth of experience as former teachers, occupational and vision therapists, reading specialists, physical educators, and principals and administrators, present at the workshops and visit schools year round to help educators view and understand children developmentally.  Students who have benefited from S.M.A.R.T., and other ACTG/MLRC interventions, have shown an increased attention span, ability to focus, and improved reading scores.