New Month: Some Old Issues
In case you missed it, Happy October's Fool's Day, however belated it is.I was reminded of an old issue that is near and dear to me. It was a crusade that I joined long ago but have since fallen to silence as my little girl has become a young lady. It is a sad but very relevant story I think about how convenient it is to label anything that is different and pigeon hole the individual, even castigating him or her to a life of near ruin as the stereotypes of labeling condemn them to always overachieve.
Well, in my daughter's case I stopped that from happening. It was not because I was 'ignoring the truth' as I was told at the time, it was because I stood my ground and challenged the accuser, my daughter's board certified second grade teacher who had determined to her satisfaction that Amanda has a learning disability.
Some of you that know me well know that I inherited dyslexia from my mother and it has been something I have had to deal with for all my life. There was a time when I could barely read aloud. It was only through my desire to learn that I taught myself how to read. It is ironic perhaps that in the mid sixties the methods for teaching reading relied heavily on old-school phonetics 'sounding out' and rote memorization of exceptions. I was in the fourth grade when I was so embarrassed at having been called upon to read aloud that I decided to do something beyond what my school system wanted to do for me. I went home, sat down with Webster's dictionary and taught myself any number of words that I had barely any idea how to pronounce.
Subsequently I taught myself how to recognize an entire word or a phrase at a time. Eventually I could even read a sentence in a glance. By the sixth grade I could read at a rather astonishing rate compared to my peers, but I was labeled as a poor reader. I was passed along with a 'C' grade in reading. I was smart enough in other readers to remember what was discussed in class and could read well enough to pass tests but my ability to read was always suspect, simply because I stammered, stuttered and mispronounced words as I read aloud.
Mrs. Crabill, my 6th grade English teacher (received her teaching credential through a correspondence course) decided to challenge me, not to better me but to accuse me of cheating. We were enrolled in a SRA (Science Research Associates) program that was a structured reading advancement program. I had been in the program since the second grade. In the second grade I struggled. I barely achieved the minimum. In the third grade, only because my teacher Miss Maxim had the patience to work with me I achieve an average reading level. According to the progress charts for that program in the fourth grade I had barely achieved minimums. In the fifth grade I had achieved normal reading comprehension, and had even begun reading at the advanced level.
Skeptical, Mrs. Crabill monitored me closely. She was convinced that somehow I was cheating. It was a self paced course so cheating was possible but every other student would have immediately blown the whistle if I had ever taken the grading key before having taken the test. After a few months she was convinced that I was doing something just that she had not been able to detect it. She called me up to the principal's office and alleged that I was cheating. I denied it as I was not cheating at all. She then went into a litany of evidence based on her education and her appraisals of my oral reading abilities. Yes, I sucked at reading aloud. In some cases I still do. I can read five times faster silently than I can aloud simply because I do not have to pronounce the words to me, since the fourth grade and my self-instruction I have not had to.
The principal was accusing me of cheating based solely on Mrs. Crabill's evaluation and he was actually very, very angry with me that I was not confessing to the alleged cheating. I proposed a solution that took both of them by surprise. "Give me a book that I have never read and let me read some of it and then I will tell you what it says."
Mrs. Crabill was reading Ken Kesey's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. She handed the book to me and told me to start on page forty, which was twenty pages back from where she had already read. I read it to page sixty in a time interval by word count average that they determined was about 650 words per minute which was at least 300 words per minute faster than the best reader in my class at the time. Obviously they were skeptical, yet I told them what was going on in the book and even told them the words that I did not know, some of them I had figured out from context.
The principal grabbed a book from the shelf of the library where we were sitting and it happened to be Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities. He told me to read it from the beginning. Honestly it was the first time I had ever seen the book and I found it challenging at first but then I realized that the author was contrasting the conditions of Paris to London at the time. I looked up twenty pages into the classic and gave my interim oral book report.
On the basis of their evaluation I was somehow miraculously able to read all of a sudden and through whatever magic had happened in the course of the educational process. At any rate I was no longer branded a slow reader.
When I went on to the seventh grade I received A's in English and reading.
My teacher believed in me. When a teacher believes in a student there is magic and chemistry; the world needs to heed it because it may well change the paradigm.
Back to my daughter.
I had to preface everything with my experience so that you would understand the passion that I have regarding learning disabilities. In some cases learning disabilities are convenient labels assigned to 'problem children'. In the case of my daughter Amanda her second grade teacher was on the verge of having her classified as mentally challenged and assigtned to special education. The matter was rapidly spinning out of control. When I attempted to step in I was accused of being, a loving and overly defensive father who was unwilling to accept the harsh truth that my daughter might never achieve such lofty goals as, say a college education.
I based my defense of Amanda on facts. She was reading children's books to herself at age 3. As I was reading books to her baby sister Sarah, she was quietly reading herself to sleep in the other ben in the room they shared. I had even wondered whether she was reading or merely looking at the pictures. I asked her to tell me the story from flipping the pages of the book. She told me the story verbatim, from the words on the page. She was reading to me.
Amanda was born in December of 1988 so she fell into the no-man's land of decision as to which class she should belong to, the class of 2006 or the class of 2007. Jina, my wife and I actually discussed the benefits and the liabilities of putting her in school when she was basically 5 1/2 years old. I was confident that she would learn alongside much older students. To a six-year-old a half year is a substantial portion of a lifetime and a period of immense mental development.
The other detriment to Amanda’s start was that we put her into a private school for the first year. They stressed the Bible and the basics of reading and math. Based upon our gross dissatisfaction with the results, the following year we enrolled her in the public school system which was one of the best in the state of Connecticut.
Six weeks into the school year, I receive a phone message from Amanda's second grade teacher, suggesting a parent teacher conference. I reply it is scheduled and all that. My wife and I arrive at the school and are cordially greeted by the teacher. I had he distinct feeling that she really did care and she thought she was helping us by identifying a problem. She informed us that based on her experience and training she had determined that Amanda had a learning disability and she wanted our permission to administer additional tests.
I was appalled. I was even more appalled that Jina, my wife seemed to accept it at face value and was even asking the teacher's advice for how to go forward. Granted that was the responsible parent approach for someone that had a disability but I was still way back at the point of determining just how the teacher had arrived at the conclusion that Amanda even had a disability.
"I can assure you, Mr. Williams that I have had extensive training in psychology and I know the indications of a learning disability. Unfortunately your daughter has a all the traits of disability."
"I have had some of those psychology classes as well. Tell me specifically what you base your assessment on?"
"She is easily distracted and does not complete her assigned work."
I looked her in the eye. "Does she do any in class work?"
"Yes, she does."
"Is that acceptable?"
"Yes, usually it is. Many times it is incomplete."
"So when you make her stand up before the class her work is correct?"
"I know where you are going with thing, Mr. Williams..."
"Answer the question if you would."
"Yes, her solutions are correct but she does not pay any attention in class...."
"So how is she learning the material well enough to come up with the correct solutions if in fact she is not paying ANY attention in class. Why she must be an inspired genius! She comes to school, doesn't pay attention but still knows how to arrive at correct solutions."
"She is a disruptive influence on class."
"She is probably bored," I said. "Your presentation does not stimulate her enough to capture her attention. The is not a learning disability but a teaching disability."
"I beg your pardon."
"Look. My daughter was reading when she was three years old."
"How do you know that?"
"I was in the room and asked her to tell me the story and she did."
"She memorized it."
"Then what the heck is language. You memorize; you recognize - that is the difference of what in the real world?"
"No parent wants to admit that a son or daughter might have difficulties."
I stood up and at that point. "Look my daughter is as worthy as any other student here perhaps she is more so but that you refuse to see that, she will fail in your eyes. She is bored. That is all."
Today:
Amanda is an honor student with a very high GPA and high scores on both the SAT and ACT. Almost everyday she receives offers from some of the nation's most prestigious institutions. For someone who was supposed to have a learning disability that required convening a teacher parent conference, I think Amanda has overcome all that. My pain there is that obviously had I not been a good father and stood behind my daughter she might have endured at least several years of fumbling in an attempt to train her for a much lesser role in life than she is capable of achieving, all based on the word of a second grade teacher who happened to be mistaken.
How many of our kids are misdiagnosed or slapped with conenient labels that become the foundation for a life of failure? I know there are kids that need extra attention. I get it! I am saying that we probably need to assume the best of our kids, and observe for a time or two longer, exhausting every chance before we condemn them to life under the stigma of a label.
E
posted by Unknown @ 9:12 PM
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