I am an LD/BD teacher. I serve children from age 4-9. I get VERY frustrated when , in SST meetings, other “expert” reading teachers say things like “well, a learning disability can be overcome… the problem is this child doesn’t try.. Or he/she is not looking at the words, he/she is guessing!” What do I say to this Reading Recovery teacher who has just told this parent that his/ her child things like that?
Re: Other teachers
This is a tough one. Many of my colleagues shift into those kind of statements as well about our children with learning differences.
I think they do it because they don’t have anything else to say. As teachers, we are often not guided or encouraged to think about changing what we do to accomodate for students with learning differences. It took a law to get us to do that.
School is a group process. Teachers design lessons and intend those lessons to work for many children to take them from one point to another. When a child doesn’t get to that next point, it simply isn’t in the culture of teaching to say, “Perhaps I need to be doing something differently.” Teachers are encouraged to be efficient and do what works for most kids - but not all kids and are encouraged to think of themselves as always right… after all, we’re the teacher…
Your Reading Recovery teacher doesn’t know what else to say or what else to offer. If we don’t put the blame onto the student then we would have to put it onto ourselves and no one is comfortable doing that. And, in our culture, we sadly too often look for blame and identify the problem without working toward solution.
In my team meetings, I’m trying something new. When my colleagues shift into the old mantre of “The kid doesn’t try, the kid’s lazy, the kid doesn’t care” I now say, “Whatever we may think about why this is happening, can we try to brainstorm to solution on this child?”
You might find a moment to say to the Reading Recovery teacher that for the next parent conference you’re trying not only to tell the parent what’s wrong but also what you and she are both doing to try to make it right.
Good luck.
If it is obvious in other classes that this child is giving his/her 110%, then you can say that there appears to be more to the reading problem that the reading recovery teacher isn’t able to address. Has the child been evaluated for ld’s already? My experience is that my son went to the reading specialist for 2 yrs + and in 4th grade was given school eval. At the meeting, even though no carryover was seen from the reading class, the reading teacher showed up that day(of the meeting) with a new star result, stating that he had suddenly reached 4th grade level, even though previously he had been on about a 2nd grade level only a couple of months before. His class work and tests didn’t support the miracle, nor did the eval. They found his adhd to be affecting him and was taken out of reading class and into sp.ed. under ohi. Even though he only spent one whole yr and some months in the resource room for lan. arts, he has been more successful since that yr than the years before.
I am not sure what you tell a parent, I don’t think teachers are allowed to bad mouth each other to parents, however, I would convey somehow that you disagree that the child is lazy or not trying. Suggesting further testing or an initial test might help.