Today in class we started watching a video called ' How DIfficult can this be?(F.A.T city workshop). It is very interesting and eye opening so far. How it is presented makes it's topic very real. It deals with teaching children/students with learning or have been said that they have learning disabilities. The video is done with all sorts of normal and high achieving adults and they are put in positions that a child with a learning disability endures each and every day, not just at school.
This video makes you imagine and see what a child goes thru in everything at school and has really helped me understand what it's really like. I always knew it would be tough , although the word tough doesnt even begin to describe how it would be to have one of these learning disabilities, but this video is like putting on a pair of glasses after wearing the wrong ones all these years. It's made me view learning disabilities in a totally different light.
My aunt, who I live with, is the teacher for students with severe learning disabilities. She graduated as a teacher from the university of Alberta with a degree and major in English, and so this has been a big adjustment from teaching high school english classes. Now she deals with something very different every day from a teachers perspective. It's tough, I've learned that much from watching her. She leaves the house at 7am and returns back home at 10:30pm and sometimes later most evenings. Her entire life in the last 3 years has been devoted completely to her job. She was asked to head up the start of the learning disabilities part of the school and since then she and the school have come a long way. She has students that don't get regular meals , and that coupled with a learning disabilities could be paralyzing in a learning environment. Along with the intensity of teaching 25 learning disabled students, she also started a breakfast program in her class so that students that aren't getting the proper nutrition, get a chance at it in her classroom. It has been extremely effective and beneficial. These students have come a long way. Each student in her class needs an individualized lesson plan outline, and has different needs and goals, and last year 9 of her students graduated, so that was amazing to see, but it meant this year she had to start afresh on new plans for her new students. Along with that, there are countless meetings she must attend with the parents and teachers and the principal, and she is in evening classes for sign language for the 2 deaf students in her class. Wow, it seems like I am going on and on, but after seeing that movie, and living with her, I see this all in a whole new light. She is one of the main reasons I wanted to go into teaching. She is a true inspiration to me!
These are some of the things that I noted from the movie that caught my attention:
- misconception is that learning disabilities are a school problem, it's in every part of that students life
- many teachers consider LD (learning disabilities) just something that if you press hard enough is fixable ,that the student is just lazy... WRONG
-anxiety affects the learning , LD students deal with this every day
- LD 's are a lifelong struggle for the child
- first thing that we do in a stressful situation is to look away because makes us not look at the situation but this does not solve the problem
-pace of the class felt too fast for the people in his experiment to show the adults what it's like being a student with LD.
- a normal child processes the answer, the LD child must first process the question then the answer, and so the class feels very fast paced because there is Twice the processing to do
- technique: take LD child aside when no one is around and explain that you understand and give them something you will do instead of stressing them out in the same situation... Eg... Tell the student that you will only question them when you are standing in front of their desks child can see the teacher moving in her direction and get answer ready already
- LD child may not be able to focus stuff out like everything around of then, may be paying attention but they notice everything around as well
- no one wants to volunteer or take risks , don't like dealing with something if they don't know what's coming up
- LD child learns that if you get an answer right the LD child learns that if you get an answer right the is no reinforcement or anything, but if you get it wrong the teacher has much more negative reinforcement if you get it wrong .
- t eachers often do ' blaming the victim' if they can't answer
- motivation is one of the most confused things in education today
- LD 's have very little to do with motivation, they are to do with perception instead
- we can all see it ( what is trying to be taught) maybe, but we don't understand it until a teacher brings meaning to it.... Student needs a teacher!
- lots of teachers assume that if you understand a list of words, you will automatically understand a paragraph with them
- many times a LD child will get in trouble and say he doesn't know what he did wrong and we don't believe him but he is telling the truth.
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