Doug Noon has a discussion at Borderlands, In Names We Trust, on the advantages and disadvantages of labelling, specifically labelling kids as learning disabled. The comments are fascinating (I don’t mean mine; I mean the other teachers’). I agree st…

At some point we probably should have a debate on whole language — but we’d have to do some ground-clearing and weeding first, to make sure that we’re talking about the same thing.

Second, disclosure. I’m self-educated on learning disabilities. My daughter was diagnosed with dyslexia in 1997, at the age of 8. My deepest thanks to her second grade teacher (who was also her kindergarten teacher) who called me the second week of school to say that it was like ddd (darling dyslexic daughter) had absorbed none of the reading instruction in 1st grade. Darlene was a very experienced teacher (30+ years) and had also taught my daughter’s older brothers.

If I known then what I know now….oh well, after about 500 hours of remediation, spread over three years, my daughter became an avid, independent reader. Given her slow processing speed, her reading rate is still slower than one would expect, and if a text has a lot of dialog (think Huck Finn) or is factually dense (history textbooks) she reads while listening to the text (thank you Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic).

She is in a demanding college-preparatory program and will go on to college in the fall.

She is not, however, “cured”. Some examples of the way she is still affected: In handwritten work, the letters don’t always appear, or don’t always appear in the correct order (”said” in one sentence; “siad” in the next; and possibly “sad” in the third). She appears to be incapable of proofreading on the fly — she won’t perceive the errors until she’s had a chance to regroup. Interestingly, those sorts of errors are far more rare in typewritten work. The output issues trip her up in the sciences and math. However, in college (unlike high school) she’ll have the opportunity to balance her workload–if she is taking statistics, for example, she will count that as two classes and have the extra time for study and distributed practice to master the material.

She has learned to advocate for herself. Example: explaining her high IQ + slow processing speed to the naive: “It’s like my brain needs to be defragmented. They don’t know how to do that for humans yet, just computers.” She’s learned that she does better with well-organized instructors, an insight which will serve her well in college. She’s learned how to use guides such as Cliff/Sparknotes as concept maps for approaching literature. Enough examples–I could go on for a long time.

With respect to my daughter, it’s not just “a learning difference”. She does have areas of deficit. Ignoring them by papering them over with “learning differences” does her no good. It is important that she knows what her areas of deficit are, so that she can learn how to work around them, or compensate. It is also true that she has formidable strengths.

My job as a parent has been focused on finding the correct remediations, and making sure she gets them and helping her preserve her self-concept as a learner and as a human being.

My daughter doesn’t think of herself as “a dyslexic” but as “a person with dyslexia”. The condition does not limit what she can do–but it does impose some burdens as to how much more work she might have to do to achieve her goals. She has been helped along the way by some truly inspiring teachers, who saw her as a whole person. I have in mind particularly Kat Gullo and Walter Mayes, her 6th grade language arts teacher and the librarian, respectively, at her middle school. Both coaxed her into learning to love reading.

You wrote,

“I’ve never had a course in reading dysfunction or neurological processes in reading, even in my graduate courses for a reading endorsement. Few teachers have, I’d wager. Every public school teacher has experience working with kids who have learning disabilities, but training in what to do is not widely available. Mostly, what we are offered is a commercially packaged solution that’s adopted at the district level with training provided to specialists and aides. So I’m behind the curve where theory is concerned here.”

Doug, don’t you think that is astonishing? You are trained as a professional — but your professional training totally ignores the needs of a significant subset of the population you are to teach. Doesn’t that raise questions about the quality of your preparation? It’s as if a physician specializing in internal medicine learned nothing about neurology.

Nobody has a solid figure on what percentage of kids have difficulties with phonemic awareness — 2%? 5%? 10%? 15%? 20%? Even the International Dyslexia Association doesn’t have a hard figure.

You are not alone, though. In the course of writing my blog, I’ve come across teacher after teacher who reports being totally ignorant about the neurology of reading and language-based learning disabilities. I’ve even heard of SpEd teachers who have never heard of Orton-Gillingham, and have never read anything about dyslexia.

Yesterday, Lisa Hannum wrote (a guest post at the Special Education Law Blog)

http://specialedlaw.blogs.com/home/2007/01/a_structured_la_1.html

“The genealogy of all structured language programs can be traced back to Samual Orton and Anna Gillingham, O-G for short. Although Wilson is probably the best known of these commercially available programs, Concept Phonics, SLANT, and Project Read, are among the many that use the fundamental strategies of O-G instruction. There are many in the field who are not wed to a single program but rely on a thorough understanding of the research that supports these strategies to teach children who are failing to learn to read through traditional classroom strategies.

The sad news is that O-G instruction, or instruction in structured language, is rarely taught at the college and university level. Few teachers, including those with advanced degrees as Reading Specialists, have hands-on experience with O-G, or fully understand why Guided Reading doesn’t work for at least 20% of the students in their classrooms. Proactive, motivated teachers have to seek this type of training on their own, usually at their own expense, unless they are fortunate enough to be in a district that recognizes the value of training staff in a structured language program. “

In art education training, Bill Thomas my prof. said. and I am remembering from my notes..”if you ever even glimpse the “real” life of the child, the art of their home, what they craft and make… you are a rare bird. And there will be on that razor’s edge a possiblity to both learn(as teacher) and really instruct. Creating places where these different worlds can collide is not something we discuss anymore.Not at all in the dialogs I here in CA in my trainings.

Last week I asked my parents to construct snail shells for the kids to wear to sing a tune. People at school, teachers scoffed..”they don’t have materials, they don’t do homework, too poor. ”
Well sitting iin my room right now are 9 of the most beautiful constructions I ever saw with more awesome internal support structures, art and design, engineering, you should see the internal structures. Canned Directed Instruction would not have allowed this, it would have at best generated a pattern to follow, but trust in these families to “know how”. I was experimenting with connections like I am discussing. What can “we ” do?. There is something about trust in here too……. From this kids learned, teachers learned, I learned that my families can make some awesome structures but more importantly I bridged something that the dual language, cultural issues the school as institute…let’s say it knocks holes in walls just as that irritating blogger says I am about. I am about kicking holes in these walls. Yes.

Yet in truth I have had to laugh over the years at times teachers saw it (immense capability in a child theat was seen in shallow way)and denied it with no system to “see” or use the information if gleaned…. An example. We had a student who struggled in reading and math. But a very verbal, kind , good kid. If you taught him most of the time he was out of your room in “services” which truthfully seemed to me to be a rather lab like feel for primary education. I held one week an Olympics taking 100 kids and doing all kinds of activities towards years end, as I ever like to “do” things. This was back in time.When I could possibly invent that and see it happen. I had only wanted to do this with my class but other instructor jealousies meant I had them all while they came and went. I decided to have a “free dance” competition.All came to see it, big deal as it turned out. We really saw a dance off in our kids-that told me something. I had to totally control how far out that could go too. But this child was different, not in neighborhood style at all. He tap danced with the most remarkably complex and developed dance I ever saw. My daughters are in dance and one a true jazz tapper I can tell you Kevin was that good…better….I saw applied math, I saw all they ways we could have taught the things he needed to know. A bit late a week before in 6th grade he left the school. I saw the window. This is where I look…this was my training.

Look for the capacity…. is my saying look for ways children in that “other” world, their world, construct meaning and link to it.

This isn’t a sad story, he dances professionally now, in school he struggled, in art he excelled and he has college too. I suppose what I owe Bill Thomas beyond the phenomenal work on theory of learning, mind which I see our teachers needing is that he was literally saying ….look at the doing, the life connection, look out there and have a quiet mind. Design this in all you do. Best book on that “Becoming Human Through Art” Feldman…Observation, observation. He pointed me to Murray Edelman and to metaphor where he did his PHD and to thinking about how we frame what we “know”. Thanks for this post for me once more it endorses the importances of experiences in schools, arts, making, doing, along with teacher training and richer ways of viewing. sarah